ORHAN PAMUK’S ISTANBUL -- 7

NEW YORK TIMES WORDS/STEVE WRIGHT IMAGES

I had caught up with him during the last stages of polishing his new novel, “A Strangeness in My Mind,” to be published in English in 2015, chronicling the life of an Istanbul street vendor from the 1970s to the present. 

He told me that he was grateful for a break.

“I am an obsessive about my work, but I love it,” he said.

He put on a trench coat and pulled a black baseball cap over his brow, a halfhearted effort to render himself a little less recognizable.

-Joshua Hammer