A Strangeness In My Mind is a novel Orhan Pamuk has worked on for six years. It
is the story of boza seller Mevlut, the woman to whom he wrote three years' wort
h of love letters, and their life in Istanbul. In the four decades between 1969
and 2012, Mevlut works a number of different jobs on the streets of Istanbul, fr
om selling yoghurt and cooked rice, to guarding a car park.
He observes many
different kinds of people thronging the streets, he watches most of the city get
demolished and re-built, and he sees migrants from Anatolia making a fortune; a
t the same time, he witnesses all of the transformative moments, political clash
es, and military coups that shape the country. He always wonders what it is that
separates him from everyone else - the source of that strangeness in his mind.
But he never stops selling boza during winter evenings and trying to understand
who his beloved really is.
