And with The New Life, Pamuk himself vaults from the forefront of his country’s writers into the arena of world literature. The protagonist of Orhan Pamuk’s fiendishly engaging novel is launched into a world of hypnotic texts and literally Byzantine conspiracies that whirl across the steppes and forlorn frontier towns of Turkey. Now, in Maureen Freely’s beautiful new translation, they, too, may encounter all its riches. For Turkish literary readers it is the cherished cult novel in which Orhan Pamuk found his original voice, but it has largely been neglected by English language readers. With its cascade of beguiling stories about Istanbul, The Black Book is a brilliantly unconventional mystery, and a provocative meditation on identity. Galip pursues every conceivable clue, but the nature of the mystery keeps changing, and when he receives a death threat, he begins to fear the worst. As Galip investigates, he finds himself assuming the enviable Cel l’s identity, wearing his clothes, answering his phone calls, even writing his columns. Could she have left him for her ex husband or Cel l, a popular newspaper columnist? But Cel l, too, seems to have vanished. His wife, the detective novel loving Ruya, has disappeared. A New Translation and Afterword by Maureen FreelyGalip is a lawyer living in Istanbul.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |