Istanbul: Memories and the City Istanbul: Memories and the City Istanbul: Memories and the City ("İstanbul: Hatıralar ve Şehir") is a largely autobiographical memoir by Orhan Pamuk that is deeply melancholic. It talks about the vast cultural change that has rocked Turkey – the unending battle between the modern and the receding past. It is also a eulogy to the lost joint family tradition. Most of all, it is a book about Bosphorus and Istanbul's history with the strait. It was translated into English by Maureen Freely in 2005. Pamuk wrote the book when he was on the verge of depression. In an interview he
Names of Istanbul popular speech, the most common way of referring to it came to be simply "the City" (Greek: "hē Polis", , Modern Greek: "i Poli", η Πόλη). This usage, still current today in colloquial Greek and Armenian (Պոլիս, pronounced "Polis" or "Bolis" in the Western Armenian dialect prevalent in the city), also became the source of the later Turkish name, "Istanbul" (see below). "Kostantiniyye" (Arabic, Persian , "Qusṭanṭīniyya", Ottoman Turkish , "Ḳosṭanṭīnīye") is the name by which the city came to be known in the Islamic world. It is an Arabic calqued form of "Constantinople", with an Arabic ending meaning 'place