I don't know if I had ever read a book by an author who has won the Nobel prize for literature until now. Orhan Pamuk won the prize in 2006 and the Wikipedia snippet from his Nobel announcement made him a perfect fit for the Turkish lit portion of this project: “Orhan Pamuk who in his quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures.”
The ‘clash and interlacing of cultures’. That really sums up the Turkey I experienced during my visit there. Many times, it seemed to me that the place I was visiting with more European than many places I had visited in Europe. But if you know anything about Turkey you also know there is a lot about the place that is simply not European and there are a lot of people that like it that way and to want to preserve and enhance those differences. There is both on interlacing and a clash.
I was interested to see how this would play out in literature. In that respect, ‘A New Life’ does not disappoint. The book is the story of a young man whose life is transformed by a book. He is a normal, everyday college student until one day he happens upon an intriguing woman who just happens to have a copy of ‘the book’. On his way home after their encounter, he happens on another copy of ‘the book’ and on an impulse, he buys it. After reading it, the book and the vision it presents become an obsession. He dropped everything to pursue it - abandoning the old life and all that went with it.
Is it too much to say ‘the New Life’ is a metaphor for Modernity and the west? The old life being Turkey’s religious and traditional path? You’d have to read it your self to decide, but it did not seem like such a stretch to me. And in Pamuk’s clash of civilizations, who is the victor? I couldn't say. The end is a little obscure. Probably a Nobel Prize requirement.
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