Silent House
By Orhan Pamuk
Faber and Faber, £7.99
First published in 1983 but only now translated into English, the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk’s second novel masterfully depicts the tension, confusion and conflict that accompanied the huge cultural changes Turkey underwent in the 20th century. Set in a village near Istanbul shortly before the coup of 1980, the narrative is woven from the internal monologues of six members of one family. Faruk, Nilgün and Metin have come to spend the weekend in the old family house where their grandmother Fatma still lives with her servant, Recep, a dwarf and the illegitimate son of her late husband, Selâhattin. The separate viewpoints show the characters to be cut off from each other, incapable of communication and each suffering their country’s violent identity crisis in their own private way. The post-first-World-War years of Atatürk’s radical cultural reforms are evoked through the tortured recollections of the bitter and pious grandmother. The characters are enthralling, and the novel gives rich insight into a culture in flux.
