Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2009-2022

The journals of the Nobel Prize-winning author, beautifully illustrated with his own paintings

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. This book combines those notebooks into one volume. He writes about his travels around the world, his family, his writing process, and his complex relationship with his home country of Turkey. He charts the seeds of his novels and the things that inspired his characters and the plots of his stories. Intertwined in his writings are the vibrant paintings of the landscapes that surround and inspire him.

A beautiful object in its own right, in Memories of Distant Mountains readers can explore Pamuk’s intoxicating inner world and can have a fascinating, intimate encounter with the art, culture, and charged political currents that have shaped one of literature’s most important voices.

ORHAN PAMUK won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel My Name Is Red won the 2003 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages. He lives in Istanbul. Translated by Ekin Oklap.