Orhan Pamuk, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, is one of the most interesting and versatile of contemporary writers whose prose contributes to the understanding of the cultural background of the Orient and the Occident forged out of the juxtaposition of Islam and Christianity. As a might-have-been artist, who is currently an amateur photographer, the author, in an uncommon way, visualizes the continual wonder towards colors in the surrounding reality featuring in his fictional and non-fictional texts. The most important aspects of Pamuk’s works, however, are the journeys near and far and those within oneself, as well as the wanderings through cities, especially those of his native Istanbul. Aside from the returns home and to the motherland, Pamuk contrasts the inspiring voyages out with the voyages into the collective and individual past, in all their historical and political complexity. The present paper is an overview of Orhan Pamuk’s works from the perspective of colors and the aforesaid passages, which remind his readers of travelling as a basic topos of the course of human existence.

James Joyce is one of the most important European writers, whose work has always been seen as spiced with autobiographical elements. As a consequence, less known letters, photographs, notes and other minor documents shed light not only on Joyce’s life but, as they surface, they also offer new interpretations of his works. The present article analyzes the mosaic of documents collected in the archives of Harry Ransom Center, University of Austin, Texas, in the context of the critical approaches to biography and cultural history. The examination of hitherto neglected papers connected with members of his extended family and friends contributes to the revision of the tenets of life writing and memoirs and to the reconstruction of the wider historical context of his oeuvre.