Book Beat’s Reading Group selection for June is Orhan Pamuk’s novel The White Castle. The Reading Group will meet on Wednesday, June 27th at 7pm in The Goldfish Tea Room (117 West 4th St # 101 Downtown Royal Oak, MI). All are welcome! Books are discounted 15% at Book Beat.

Taking place in 17th century Istanbul, a young Italian scholar is taken prisoner by the Ottoman Empire and forced to become the slave of a Hoja (master), whom he resembles in appearance. The slave is told to instruct the master in Western science and technology, from medicine to astronomy. But Hoja wonders why he and his slave are the persons they are and whether given knowledge of each other’s most intimate secrets, they could actually exchange identities.

Often compared to the work of Borges and Nabokov, Orhan Pamuk is one of Turkey’s preeminent novelists and winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature.