Rating: 
Summary: In search of a new identity
Review: When a country confronts radical changes, its cultural manifestations will equally reflect the confusion brought about by these same changes. "The New Life" responds to the dramatic turn around in Turkey's history, its breaking away from traditional culture and codes and the introduction of Western values.
In a narrative which equally breaks away from conventional mode (more to the likes of Borges's labyrinth), in an ultra post-modernistic style, where characters disappear and reappeared with changed identities, in a dreamlike surrealistic setting, where plot is irrelevant, Ohram Pamuk evokes the contemporary dilemma of Turkey and its national identity.
The characters Nahit/Osman/Mehmet/Dr. Fine/Rifki all personify the contradictory facets of nowadays Turkey. Whether they represent fundamentalism, militarism, or westernization, Pamuk satirizes all. Osman finds himself at this cultural crossroad and guided by a book and love, embarks himself in a "Kafkian" journey to find the real meaning of life and what its future might hold in surprise. He painfully realizes that his world is contingent upon misinterpreted signals and indiscriminate habits while real life is located somewhere in another dimension. Is he in fact seeking Turkey's future? He desperately wants to be at the threshold of life and when he is able to reach this stage of transiton he discovers he is both in peace and waging a war, restless and somnolent, in eternity and also in time, sleepwalking and awake.
"I hear the call of silence, the like of which I had never before experienced. Ah, to be neither here nor there! To become someone else and roam the peaceful garden that exists between the two worlds!" It all boils down to an allegorical interpretation of Turkey's present. How will Turkey's "New Life" be like? "What I am searching for among shards of glass, drops of blood, and the dead is the threshold of another kind of life."
Pamuk sees present Turkish culture manifesting a vengeful rage against foreign cultures that annihilates the past (fundamentalism), its allegoraical battle against printed matter, against the book of "The New Life." He uses beautifully creative, imaginary concepts such as the clock in which instead of the usual cuckoo bird, two other figures have been employed, a tiny imam who appears on the lower balcony at the proper time for prayer to announce three times that "God is Great!" and a minute toy gentleman wearing a tie but no mustache who showed up in the upper balcony on the hour, asserting that "Happiness is being a Turk, a Turk, a Turk." It is Westernization-versus-Islamization! Although it is sad to realize "we will never be ourselves again, mature assessment may save us from disaster. Civilizations come and civilizations go. Not only do we refuse to drink wine, we will not succumb to drinking Coca-Cola." Turkey was in a state of bliss, of innocence, of true happiness, but with the "Great Conspiracy" it has lost its sense of time, life and collective memory.
They journey taken by Osman and Jana (through the roads of Turkey, in search of happiness, love, and new life), parallels Turkey's search for a new identity. Turkey needs to listen to his own voice, to "the whispers in the depths of the night," and eventually it will acquire a voice of its own, it will find its "New Life." Nothing remains the same forever, and although Osmar today is a foolish here trying to discover the meaning of life in a land suffering from anmesia, there is hope... "someday, someday perhaps a thousand years from now, we will avenge ourselves, we wil bring an end to this conspiracy by taking them (the West) out of our soup, our chewing gum, our souls."
When it was first published in 1994, "The New Life" made a big success in Turkey, it sold 200,000 copies, a record in Turkish publishing. Because of its metaphysical structure it is not an easy reading, it demands full alertness and the ability to penetrate in a realm of dreams, senseless time, and allegorical abundance. Knowing Turkey and its history makes the journey easier, and it is definitely a must for those willing to understand present Turkey. Beyond doubt, another great achievement for Ohram Pamuk.
Rating: 
Summary: The Edge of Existence
Review: When I think about it, I have read very few books that I knew, as I was reading them, I would be compelled to reread again. I thought this while reading "War and Peace." And who can blame me? I haven't reread it yet, because I am saving it for old age . . .or something. I have read Anna Karenina four times and I am beginning to "get it". That isn't to say I didn't get "it" before, but some things are too rich, too deep and too powerful to be tossed off with a "been there, done that" great-literature-as-fast-food-for-the- mind sentiment. Friends, I ACHED after reading this story; I HURT, I felt disturbed by reading it and by not reading it, MOVED, excited and overwhelmed. Did I say MOVED? That is what art does. This book is an art form.
If you don't like strong sentiments . . . if reading yourself to the wary thin edge of existence is not your kind of sport, then I can't recommend this book. Ah, but if you like reading literature that is powerful, clever, strong AND philosophical (shall I add mystical, symbolic and metaphorical?) If you want a mind-altering experience in words, something perhaps, akin to the literary equivilent of, oh say-- a train wreck, a head-on collision . . .THE LOVE OF YOUR LIFE . . . if you want to be immobilized in your seat, finding out that you read past your own subway stop, a good meal, maybe past your own fate, the New Life is transformative; it is precisely for you. This book expounds its powerful and now famous first sentence. Read it and be awed.
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