Imagine you’re broke (if you aren’t already), and you’ve just shown up to your successful cousin’s wedding. You’re without a gift, but even worse, you’re without a date. Old relatives are walking by and pinching your cheek asking when they’ll be able to come to your wedding.

You’ve just opened a bottle of vodka and are drinking from under the table as you watch family endow the newlyweds with lavish gifts. Then it happens: a moment so powerful, your life changes irreparably. Someone is looking your way. They make direct contact with you; with eyes that inspire such transformative romance, you spend the following years waxing poetic and sending love letters.

This is precisely what happened to the hapless protagonist, Mevlut, in Orhan Pamuk’s newest novel A Strangeness in My Mind.

Mevlut is a classic Pamuk protagonist, helplessly unaware, frustratingly stubborn, almost detestable, but eerily familiar, as if somehow at any moment you could lose focus and become the Mevlut of your own story. Unbeknownst to him, Mevlut finds himself as the groundzero for a massive tug-of-war much larger than his life, much larger than Istanbul, even larger than Turkey itself.

The story is centered around Mevlut’s move to Istanbul from a rural, more conservative Turkish village. Mevlut is a struggling street vendor, trying to catch the wave of new capital and European currency flowing in the streets. He’s attempting to make a living plying a trade that is on the brink of non-existence. But, it is what his father taught him to do, and he never finished school so he’s compelled to continue doing the one thing that he knows well.

Istanbul becomes the subtle protagonist as it begins to throb with life around Mevlut. Streets once empty are filled with chatter. Women walk without veils and bars serve Raki, a strong, Turkish liquor. Mevlut doesn’t despise the new Istanbul, but he’s rather like our moms and dads trying to use an iPhone—he gets frustrated seeing the things he’s comfortable with being replaced by new things that operate in new ways.

The neighborhoods of Istanbul are segregated in profound complexities. In so many moments, these mixed communities explode with violence between nationalists and communists, east and west, north and south, Islamist and secularist, and Turks and Kurds. But Istanbul, in all of its ambition and old-world mystique, will overcome all challenges and remain smack dab in the middle of the world.

Photograph of Orhan Pamuk by Jerry Bauer

Speaking from experience, I can tell you that A Strangeness in My Mind is an adrenaline rush for news junkies. The novel covers a vast period of Istanbul’s history, from adolescence to maturity. It won’t skip over hardship, car bombs, thugs, and systemic corruption in order to romanticize the city. Rather, it provides an unheard history attuned to a Western audience.

As a personal note, I began reading A Strangeness in My Mind, ironically, over turkey during thanksgiving. Irony aside, the climate is no laughing matter, and the political situation involving Erdogan’s contested election and the subsequent attack on Russian aircraft, then the assassination of the most powerful Kurdish lobbyist cannot be correctly understood via western media sources. A Strangeness in My Mind is a conduit to understanding Turkey, Pamuk’s guiding hand will provide an eager reader with a powerful emotional connection to the myriad of communities coexisting there.

For the first time in a while, certainly all year, I am unsure of what to make of a book.

I first heard of Submission through a conversation with a customer. Written by acclaimed French novelist Michel Houellebecq, Submission was apparently “the most talked about book in Europe right now” or at least the most controversial. I picked up a copy that same day. Two days later, I had finished it.

Houellebecq, whom the New Yorker calls “the most famous French novelist of his generation,” was already a controversial figure prior to the release of Submission. His previous works have drawn polarizing views from international critics and have led to his being labeled as misogynist and racist (both of which he insistently denies). He was even taken to court for “inciting racial hatred” during the tour for his novel Platform, and, although he was acquitted, he later moved to Ireland where he lived in exile for a few years. Submission, his first novel in five years, which chronicles an Islamic political party’s rise to power in France in the year 2022, was sure to fan the flames. But not even Houellebecq could have predicted (nor, indeed, have wanted) the publicity that would follow.

On January 7 2015, to publicize the release of Submission that same day, Houellebecq appeared on the cover of French magazine Charlie Hebdo over the caption, “The Predictions of Wizard Houellebecq.” By gruesome coincidence, this would be the very day that two men belonging to Al-Qaeda stormed the Parisian office of Charlie Hebdo and killed 11 people. Houellebecq subsequently canceled his promotional tour, but Submission was already set to become one of the biggest books of the year.

The beginning was unquestionably the most enjoyable part of the book to read. Here we are introduced to Francois, a forty-something-year-old professor of literature at the prestigious Sorbonne University in Paris. Single, cynical, and rather brilliant, Francois has spent the entirety of his adult life studying and teaching the literature of renowned French author J.K. Huysmans. His adoration borders on obsession and leaves little room in his life for interest in politics or human relations. He has no contact with his parents; his only friends are a couple of colleagues from the university. He casually dates his students, averaging a year or so with each woman until she reveals that she has “met someone.” He is essentially alone, and he prefers it that way. But neither the reader nor Francois is under the impression that he is at all happy.

The beauty of these early chapters lies in Francois’ love of Huysmans, of literature in general. “Only literature can put you in touch with another human spirit…with all its weaknesses and grandeurs, its limitations, its pettinesses, its obsessions, its beliefs…Only literature can give you access to a spirit from beyond the grave.” This is the author speaking as much as it is his narrator. It’s utterly mesmerizing to follow an expert in his craft as he weaves through such broad and varied topics as the nature of sexuality and romance, the role of religion in society, and the cultural beliefs that are necessarily doomed (feminism, secularism) and favored (patriarchy).

Conflict introduces itself to Francois’ monotonous life as the elections of 2022 draw near and rumors of sudden and drastic change pass through the university faculty. The new-to-France political party known as the Muslim Brotherhood is rapidly gaining support under its capable and charismatic leader Ben Abbes, and professors hypothesize the educational and social reforms that are sure to follow Islamic leadership in France. Francois is unable to hide from the social unrest unfolding in a world that he has so far been able to mostly ignore. Soon he must confront the same spiritual and moral dilemmas that his beloved Huysmans faced nearly two hundred years earlier.

I’m still trying to decide how I feel about the book as a whole. It was thoroughly enjoyable to read, and I learned a lot about French politics and literature (although I had to be content to let some of the more obscure allusions elude me). But its cynicism and misogyny at times overwhelmed me. Critics can’t seem to make up their minds either. Despite Houellebecq’s insistence that the novel is not satirical, many reviewers label the book as political satire. I’d love for more Americans (and particularly Jacksonians) to read this book so that we can participate in the debate that is prevalent in European literary circles.

“Even in our deepest, most lasting friendships, we never speak as openly as when we face a blank page and address a reader we do not know,” says Francois in one of his musings on Huysmans. In Submission, Houellebecq has a lot to say, but it’s the reader’s job to detect exactly what that is.

For those that don’t know, I’m the new guy at Lemuria, and I like new things. Books, movies, food, whatever it is, I like trying new things. Not that there is anything wrong with “old” things. I actually like a lot of those, too. This isn’t a post arguing the virtue of the exciting and shiny versus the tried and true. It is, however, a post about how revisiting something old has helped me to see something new.

If I’m being honest, moving back to Jackson a few months ago was not my favorite idea. As much fun as I had here in college, I had planned to spend my 20’s avoiding roots and any obligations. I thought I’d travel and move around, chasing jobs and adventures, making new friends, and trying as many new things as I could before it was time to be responsible and “settle down.” Things have not gone according to that plan. As I packed up to leave a “new” place and head towards this “old” one, I was reintroduced to this strange little book: Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. I don’t think it was coincidence that one of my new friends put it back into my hands just a short time before my move.

Invisible Cities is a book without much of a story, and without many characters; but what it lacks in narrative, it makes up for in imagery. Kublai Khan has summoned Marco Polo to tell of the many great cities he has encountered throughout the Khan’s ever-expanding empire. The majority of the book is divided into chapters, each being Polo’s description of a city he has visited. Conversations between Khan and Polo are spread between these chapters. Across the barriers of language, age, culture, and experience, the two begin to communicate, Polo describing what he has seen with objects collected in his travels.

With no real plotline, Calvino’s writing focuses on the cross section of expectation and imagination, the fine line between understanding and knowing. Kublai Khan expects to hear of the towns and people spread throughout his empire, instead Marco Polo teases the emperor’s imagination, as well as the reader’s. Some of the places he claims to have visited are beautiful, others terrifying. Some are built up like modern cities with skyscrapers; others are built to defy common sense. They are all unique and richly detailed.

Through their conversation, Khan has some understanding of the cities Polo describes, yet never having visited, he can never know them as Marco Polo does. The reader is faced with a similar dilemma. We read the words Polo uses to name and depict all the places he has been, but the cities remain invisible to us, only truly existing in the explorer’s mind.

SPOILER ALERT…Sorta.

Of course, these cities aren’t real in our world, or in Khan’s empire. Each location described by Polo is a poem written in an urban language, one without words and phrases, but sometimes of concrete and steel, sometimes of stone, water, pipes, and more. The Explorer’s descriptions turn an idea into a landscape, one that he uses to impress the Emperor. Eventually Kublai Khan catches on to Marco Polo’s scheme and it is revealed that he has never traveled the empire, nor does he have any knowledge of any great cities other than his own Venice. All that he has described, all the ideas and fantastic depictions are inspired by his hometown. With every look at the Venice he loves, Polo sees an entirely new city.

It’s this thought that stood out to me as I read Invisible Cities again. Picturing the metropolises of Polo’s imagination while I read, I became jealous of his perspective that made each look at his “old” city seem like something “new.” This time, I was not reading about someone’s explorations and discoveries, I was reading about someone rediscovering a place already known. This made me change my mind about a few things and, as I’ve seen over the last few months, opened my mind to the new city I found in Jackson. It isn’t the same one I left, not in my mind. As Polo describes one of his cities, he says “You leave Tamara without having discovered it.” It seems I left Jackson without having really discovered it and now that I’m back, I have another chance.

Written by Matt