For many years, Orhan Pamuk kept a record of his daily thoughts and observations, entering them in small notebooks and illustrating them with his own paintings — writing about his travels around the world, his family, his writing process, and his complex relationship with his home country of Turkey, the seeds of his novels are unearthed in its pages. Translated by Ekin Oklap and evoking the visionary illuminated manuscripts of William Blake, Memories of Distant Mountains is uncategorizable — a highly original work from one of world literature’s great storytellers.

Join Pamuk in a special reading and conversation with his Turkish editor, Pelin Kivrak, whose profound knowledge of the material — she read and studied all 32 notebooks, over 6000 pages — makes for a truly intimate encounter with an essential writer and artist, along with the art, culture, and charged political currents that have shaped his voice — and inner life — for decades.

“Essential reading for our times. [Pamuk is] narrating his country into being.”

Margaret Atwood