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
Strait of Tartary empires. Since the Manchus' rise to prominence in 1644, the name "Tartars" became applied to them as well, and Manchuria (and Mongolia) became known to the Europeans as the "Chinese Tartary". Accordingly, when La Pérouse charted most of the strait between Sakhalin and the mainland "Chinese Tartary" in 1787, the body of water received the name of the Strait (or Channel, or Gulf) of Tartary. In Japan, the strait is named after Mamiya Rinzō, who traveled to the strait in 1808 whereof the name was introduced by Philipp Franz von Siebold in his book "Nippon: Archiv zur Beschreibung von Japan"