A postmodern reading of Murmures à Beyo?lu: an intertextual odyssey from Nabokov to Pamuk, from Paris to Istanbul

Abstract

This article focuses on Murmures à Beyo?lu (2009), the first novel by French writer David Boratav (Paris, 1971), and on the analysis of some of its basic characteristics as a postmodern novel. Thus, we will prioritize the interpretation of the protagonist and the city as the umpteenth postmodern re-reading of the Odyssey, in the journey of initiation of a Homeric character à la recherche of his lost Ithaca, Istanbul. The portrayal of the central character is completed with a sketch of the intertextual richness of the novel, and the vision of the Turkish capital is framed within the postmodern representation of the city, under a complex perspective that steers clear of the typical nineteenth-century exoticism.