Orhan Pamuk is a famous Turkish writer, winner of numerous national and international awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature for “searching for the soul of his melancholic city.” Pamuk’s new novel, “My Strange Thoughts,” which he has been working on for the last six years, is perhaps the most “Istanbul” of all. Its action covers more than forty years, from 1969 to 2012. The main character Mevlut works on the streets of Istanbul, watching how the streets are filled with new people, the city gains and loses new and old buildings, poor people come from Anatolia to work. Before his eyes, coups take place, authorities change each other, and Mevlut still wanders the streets, on winter evenings wondering what distinguishes him from other people, why he is visited by strange thoughts about everything in the world and who his beloved really is. he has been writing letters for the last three years. For the first time in Russian!