A short historical novel set in the seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire. A young Italian scholar is captured at sea and taken to Istanbul, where he becomes the slave of a learned man who looks strikingly like him. The two men share knowledge, from science to fireworks, and they spend years in close, uneasy partnership.
As they exchange stories of their lives, the line between them begins to blur. The book plays with identity, East and West, and the nature of storytelling. It was the novel that first brought Pamuk wide international attention.