The Red-Haired Woman by Orhan Pamuk
I read Pamuk’s Snow many years ago and loved it but somehow never came back to him. Following a trip to Istanbul last year, I seem to be rediscovering Turkey, and recently enjoyed two Ottoman stories by Ismail Kadare.
Part I takes place while the main protagonist is a teenager and is a marvellous blow by blow account of the manual digging of a 25 metre deep well near a small township some 30 km from Istanbul. Part II then follows him as he becomes a successful business man and ends back in the same township some 30 years later. Except that the place is now well inside the confines of Istanbul. The tale is about the relationship between father and son, hanging its plot on Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and a Persian myth I never heard of called Shahnameh. In a sense, these are opposites as in one, father kills son, and in the other, son kills father. Although we can guess that one or the other will happen, we have to wait for Part III to find out which, if either, happens.
The writing is excellent but it wasn’t the tale that captured my attention so much as the evolution, growth and modernisation of the city. All the more surprising because the period covered is modern (1985-2015). To think progress required hand dug wells as recently as 1985!!
Highly recommended.
Asynchronists 