It seems just a trifle unfair that Orhan Pamuk, Nobel literature laureate and the most globally succesful Turkish author in an age, should also enjoy the best view in two continents. Across two continents, to be exact. Look out over the waters from his writing flat in Cihangir, on the Galata bank of the Golden Horn in Istanbul, and the domes and minarets of Sultanahmet (in Europe) rise above the trees on one side. On the other, over the Bosphorus where the ferries Pamuk loves forever chug from shore to shore, the Asian suburbs hover in a late-summer haze. Piling on the symbolic detail, the local mosque stands just below, with ugly high-as-houses cruise liners ("really bad ships", Pamuk snorts) tied up at a nearby quay.