ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the sociological context of the city in the material construction of the neighborhood. It outlines the structure of the Turkish mahalle and the diverse communities that inhabited it with examples from My Name is Red, and connects it with the contemporary neighborhood in The Black Book and The Museum of Innocence. Rural-to-urban migration is observed in novels such as A Strangeness in My Mind and The Red-Haired Woman. The political, socioeconomic, and cultural connotations within which Istanbul operates are clarified and supported with instances of domestic and public spaces from the novels. The chapter sketches the narratives that surround and constitute the city, which Pamuk inherits and uses in crucial ways, working within them even as he challenges and displaces them. It opens up the discussion to the figure of the flâneur, who plays a vital role throughout the book, and also to transportation that morphs into automobility. It concludes with an analysis of the neighborhood institutions of the coffeehouse and the hotel and sees them as touched with the uncanny.
