



That single encounter, though fleeting, is enough to inflame Mevlut’s heart and mind. While doing his service, Mevlut begins writing an epic series of love letters to a girl he encounters at a wedding. Then it’s into the army for compulsory military service. The novel follows Mevlut through his schooling, which is less about learning than it is about surviving bullies and boredom and dank classrooms Mevlut frequently skips class and roams the streets with friends or accompanies his father on his yogurt rounds. Mevlut and his father claim a piece of land on a hillside outside the city and build a crude home for themselves. Mevlut’s father is a street vendor by trade, who makes a meager living tramping all over the city to sell yogurt. The central figure is Mevlut, who journeys with his father from their village in the country to Istanbul, determined to make their fortune. A Strangeness in My Mind is the latest novel from the prolific, Nobel Prize–winning Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk.
