Silent House
Orhan Pamuk
Language: English
Pages: 352
ISBN: 0307700283
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Never before published in English, Orhan Pamuk’s second novel is the story of a Turkish family gathering in the shadow of the impending military coup of 1980.
In an old mansion in Cennethisar, a former fishing village near Istanbul, a widow, Fatma, awaits the annual summer visit of her grandchildren. She has lived in the village for decades, ever since her husband, an idealistic young doctor, ran afoul of the sultan’s grand vizier and arrived to serve the poor fishermen. Now mostly bedridden, she is attended by her constant servant Recep, a dwarf—and the doctor’s illegitimate son. Despite mutual dependency, there is no love lost between mistress and servant, who have very different recollections—and grievances—from the early years, before Cennethisar grew into a high-class resort surrounding the family house, now in shambles.
Though eagerly anticipated, Fatma’s grandchildren bring little consolation. The eldest, Faruk, a dissipated historian, wallows in alcohol as he laments his inability to tell the story of the past from the kaleidoscopic pieces he finds in the local archive; his sensitive leftist sister, Nilgün, has yet to discover the real-life consequences of highminded politics; and Metin, a high school nerd, tries to keep up with the lifestyle of his spoiled society schoolmates while he fantasizes about going to America—an unaffordable dream unless he can persuade his grandmother to tear down her house.
But it is Recep’s nephew Hasan, a high school dropout, lately fallen in with right-wing nationalists, who will draw the visiting family into the growing political cataclysm issuing from Turkey’s tumultuous century-long struggle for modernity.
By turns deeply moving, hilarious, and terrifying, Silent House pulses with the special energy of a great writer’s early work even as it offers beguiling evidence of the mature genius for which Orhan Pamuk would later be celebrated the world over.
Father & Son: Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, and the British Novel Since 1950
well. One can only claim self-understanding to a certain point, and beyond that one is babbling, whether one knows it or not. It was an oddly liberating thought while it lasted. When Recep came into the room, I said, “Come on, Nilgün! I’m taking you to the hospital.” “Ooff!” she said, like a child. “I don’t want to.” “Don’t be foolish! The pharmacist was right. What if there’s bleeding?” said Recep. “It wasn’t even the man who is the pharmacist, it was only his wife! I feel fine, there’s not
what you couldn’t understand before, in order to understand life” (this page). How do you interpret these last lines? What does Fatma seem to understand about her life? 18. Consider Fatma’s recollection of what Selâhattin tells her is “the most important article” in his encyclopedia: “The source of all knowledge is experimentation” (this page). How might a work of fiction like Silent House be an example such experimentation? Can a novelist “trick you with his literary skill” (this page) and
down on one of the posts near the jetty. I breathed deeply in the clean air; my heart was still beating fast. What should I do? The lights of the casinos and restaurants were gleaming in the distance. They had strung colored lights in the trees, and underneath those lights people were eating, talking with one another: my God! The door of the coffeehouse opened, and I heard Cemil call out: “Recep, Recep, where are you?” I didn’t make a sound. He didn’t see me and went inside. A long time
individual aspirin packets. “Did Kemal Bey already go out for the morning fish?” I said. “Kemal’s asleep upstairs.” I looked at the ceiling for a minute and considered that, just two inches above it, my friend lay sleeping. If he happened to stir, I would tell him about my evening. He might have something to say about those kids at the coffeehouse, but then again he might not, he might simply stare out in that bewildered way, so thoughtful, as I talked, as we talked. I took the change his wife
their unease: These old people are so strange, they laugh, how are you, Grandmother, they laugh; do you know what a television is, they laugh, why don’t you come down and sit with us, they laugh, what a nifty sewing machine, they laugh, it even has a pedal, they laugh, why do you take your cane into the bed with you when you lie down, they laugh, shall we take you for a ride in the car, Grandmother, they laugh; the embroidery on your nightie is so pretty, they laugh, why didn’t you vote in the
