Author: Orhan Pamuk
Translator(s)/ Edito: Guneli Gun
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 296
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0571193781
Description
I read a book one day, and my whole life was changed.
Osman, a young university student, becomes obsessed with a magical book that delves into the dangerous nature of love and self. He turns his back on home and family, abandons his studies and goes on a search for the meaning of the book’s darker secrets. Part road novel, part metaphysical thriller, The New Life was, on initial publication, the fastest-selling title in Turkish history. Displaying all of Pamuk’s characteristic wit and elegance, it is a stunning evocation of a nation suspended perilously between east and west.
REVIEWS
Brilliantly captures the atmosphere of the Turkish hinterland, the Anatolian steppe and its small towns with their statues of Atarurk, greasy bars and plastic billboards.
-Alain de Botton
A combination of detective story and parable, Pamuk’s blend of fantasy and realism, ingenuity and observation, showing off and modest thoughtfulness throws a powerful beam through the confusion of this odd time we live in.
-Sunday Times
Pellucid, elusive, infinitely suggestive and poignant, it is as though Borges has sustained one of his crystalline fictions for the Length of an entire novel. I have never read anything less clumsy. Everyone should read Orhan Pamuk.
-New Statesman