Scan barcode
A review by jdintr
The Red-Haired Woman by Orhan Pamuk
5.0
This is an astonishing book: astonishing for its ambition (Pamuk is paralleling both the Greek playwright, Sophocles, and the Persian bard, Fedowsi), its relevance to today, and its depth. I have loved Pamuk since reading My Name is Red, but I never thought he would again publish something as insightful as Snow, which I consider to be his masterpiece.
Step aside Snow, I'm here to say that The Red-Haired Woman is every bit as significant a book for western readers, as well as for Turks.
Snow (2002) was a novel set in the hinterlands at a time when Islamism was resurgent in rural Turkey. A secular writer journeys to Van to investigate suicides by girls wishing to wear headscarves, rekindling a long-lost romance in the process. The book explained to readers like me the passions of Islamists, while examining the issues from the POV of a westernized Turk. It was an amazing story and an astonishing piece of cross-cultural translation on the eve of the Iraq War.
Picking up 15 years later, The Red-Headed Woman isn't set in the hinterlands, but in a suburb of Istanbul in a Turkey where Islamists are dominant and President Recep Erdogan is in the process of overturning the secular republic established by Kemal Ataturk 100 years ago. The two books are complimentary, but TRHW is far more ambitious.
So many of Pamuk's novels revolve around obsession and unrequited love. Here, the 16-year-old Cem, abandoned by his father and forced to save money for college as an apprentice to a well-digger, falls hard for the title character, whose name is given several times in the book but who remains The Red-Haired Woman to the end. When he isn't busy with the tiring work of hand-digging a well 30 meters into the earth, Cem mopes around the village of Öngören, hoping to catch a glimpse of the woman.
After spending the night with TRHW, Cem makes a mistake on the work site the next day and flees the town, thinking that he has killed the kindly master well-digger who has become like a father to Cem. At this point in the plot, one might think that Pamuk has Dickens on his mind: a teenage boy has fallen on hard times but flees the scene of the crime with great expectations in store.
Ha. Pamuk has far greater lights in mind.
Two stories enter the narrative as Cem grows into adulthood: Oedipus Rex, which originates in Greece, the culture to Turkey's west, and the Shahnameh, the epic saga of the kings of Persia, the culture to Turkey's east. Both stories deal with abandoned sons; both stories end in tragic murders.
Pamuk is the perfect writer to illustrate the tensions that pull Turkey eastward as well as westward. For western readers like me, he balances secular sensibilities with a deep love for his homeland. He is an illustrator of culture every bit as precise as those featured in the Topkapi Palace.The novel's close ties to these timeless classics do not spoil a thrilling, surprising ending.
The novel reaches back into the Marxist revolutionaries of the 1960s and 70s and spans time to the present-day battle between infertile, wealthy secularists and revenge-minded nationalists/ Islamists (especially in the wake of the 2016 failed coup attempt).
The allegory is strong, the tragedy cuts like a knife. I can't recommend this book highly enough.
Step aside Snow, I'm here to say that The Red-Haired Woman is every bit as significant a book for western readers, as well as for Turks.
Snow (2002) was a novel set in the hinterlands at a time when Islamism was resurgent in rural Turkey. A secular writer journeys to Van to investigate suicides by girls wishing to wear headscarves, rekindling a long-lost romance in the process. The book explained to readers like me the passions of Islamists, while examining the issues from the POV of a westernized Turk. It was an amazing story and an astonishing piece of cross-cultural translation on the eve of the Iraq War.
Picking up 15 years later, The Red-Headed Woman isn't set in the hinterlands, but in a suburb of Istanbul in a Turkey where Islamists are dominant and President Recep Erdogan is in the process of overturning the secular republic established by Kemal Ataturk 100 years ago. The two books are complimentary, but TRHW is far more ambitious.
So many of Pamuk's novels revolve around obsession and unrequited love. Here, the 16-year-old Cem, abandoned by his father and forced to save money for college as an apprentice to a well-digger, falls hard for the title character, whose name is given several times in the book but who remains The Red-Haired Woman to the end. When he isn't busy with the tiring work of hand-digging a well 30 meters into the earth, Cem mopes around the village of Öngören, hoping to catch a glimpse of the woman.
After spending the night with TRHW, Cem makes a mistake on the work site the next day and flees the town, thinking that he has killed the kindly master well-digger who has become like a father to Cem. At this point in the plot, one might think that Pamuk has Dickens on his mind: a teenage boy has fallen on hard times but flees the scene of the crime with great expectations in store.
Ha. Pamuk has far greater lights in mind.
Two stories enter the narrative as Cem grows into adulthood: Oedipus Rex, which originates in Greece, the culture to Turkey's west, and the Shahnameh, the epic saga of the kings of Persia, the culture to Turkey's east. Both stories deal with abandoned sons; both stories end in tragic murders.
Pamuk is the perfect writer to illustrate the tensions that pull Turkey eastward as well as westward. For western readers like me, he balances secular sensibilities with a deep love for his homeland. He is an illustrator of culture every bit as precise as those featured in the Topkapi Palace.The novel's close ties to these timeless classics do not spoil a thrilling, surprising ending.
The novel reaches back into the Marxist revolutionaries of the 1960s and 70s and spans time to the present-day battle between infertile, wealthy secularists and revenge-minded nationalists/ Islamists (especially in the wake of the 2016 failed coup attempt).
The allegory is strong, the tragedy cuts like a knife. I can't recommend this book highly enough.