The Red-Haired Woman
From the Nobel Prize winner and bestselling author of Snow and My Name Is Red, a fable of fathers and sons and the desires that come between them.
On the outskirts of a town thirty miles from Istanbul, a well digger and his young apprentice—a boy fleeing the confines of his middle class home—are hired to find water on a barren plain. As they struggle in the summer heat, excavating without luck meter by meter, they develop a filial bond neither has known before. But when the boy catches the eye of a stunning red-haired woman who seems as fascinated by him as he is by her, the events that ensue change the young man’s life forever and haunt him for the next thirty years. A tale of family and romance, of youth and old age, of tradition and modernity, The Red-Haired Woman is a beguiling mystery from one of the great storytellers of our time.
Orhan Pamuk
Orhan Pamuk is Turkey’s most prominent and internationally renowned contemporary author. He is particularly praised for his portrayal of the conflicts between East and West and his unique ability to build bridges between cultures. Pamuk’s works have been major bestsellers in his home country and have been translated into 24 languages. In 1999, Time magazine selected Pamuk as one of 14 Europeans whose innovative thinking is showing the continent the way into the new millennium. Pamuk made headlines in the spring of 2004 when his books were burned at a bonfire after he spoke out about the genocide of Armenians committed by Turks 90 years ago and the mistreatment of Kurds in Turkey. Orhan Pamuk was born into a wealthy, secular family in Istanbul in 1952. He attended an American school and would have liked to become a painter, but his family did not approve of the idea. Pamuk studied architecture for a short time but dropped out. Later, he earned a degree in journalism and became a writer. He has also taught at Columbia University in the United States. With the exception of a few years, Pamuk has lived his entire life in the same neighborhood of Istanbul.
Reviews and Comments
The Red-Haired Woman revolves around two mythical stories: Sophocles’ tale of King Oedipus, who kills his father and marries his mother, and the story of Rostam and Sohrab from Iran’s national epic The Book of Kings, in which a father kills his son. This father-son theme shapes the entire life of the protagonist, Cem. The mythical narrative style is captivating at first, though it fades toward the end of the book. My first experience with Pamuk’s writing was quite enjoyable and compelling.