ISTANBUL: Memories of a City, by Orhan Pamuk. Faber & Faber, 2006, 348 pp., £8 (paper).

Turkey it seems has always inspired fear. The memory of advancing Turkish units camped outside the gates of Vienna haunted the European mind for centuries. "Where the Turk treads, no grass grows," ran one saying of the time.

Even in fictionalized versions of journeys to the East, most notably Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express," and Graham Green's "Stamboul Train," Istanbul casts its long shadow of associations over the tale, quickening the sense of intrigue.

Victorian travelers were much taken with the country, discovering all the seedy exotica and faded opulence they craved for in a decadent culture, but the Turks themselves were often portrayed as a depraved and intransigent race. Even a modern traveler like Jan Morris, writing about Istanbul for Rolling Stone, found that "Morbid fancies assailed me, and wherever I looked I seemed to see threatening images."