Ramblings and poetry
Efadul Huq comes by some gems in a novel
'I read a book one day, and my whole life was changed.' Thus begins Pamuk's The New Life, the fastest-selling title in Turkish history. Contradictorily to all praises, to me the opening line comes like the beginning of a review by a fan of Paulo Coelho. But perhaps that's what Pamuk meant when he says in this book, 'A good book is something that reminds us of the whole world'. Indeed, this book is a review of another book extremely long and metaphysical a review in which the protagonist is highlighted more than the book itself to show in what way the book affected him. A young student named Osman reads a book that erases his past, transfigures his present and reveals to him a new horizon of his future. The light of the book surges through him, revolutionising his entirety. Osman feels close enough to the book to feel the book was written only for him. He reads the magical book again and again and again, abandoning his studies. The dream is just around the corner; all he needs to do is walk to it. Lured by the dream of that new life with a mysterious angel, Osman begins to wander. Janan, a beautiful student of architecture, is Osman's object of obsession as Osman falls in love with her at the speed of light. However, Janan has a lover who has disappeared after reading the same book that Osman has read. The two of them together start their journey to attain their lovers; Osman wishes to impress Janan while Janan wishes to find her lover. The ambiguous nature of love is exposed as even with an active helping hand Osman doesn't get closer to Janan; she ignores all his approaches. Do they find Janan's lost lover in the end? What happens to Osman then? To find out that tricky ending you must read the novel yourself; let me not give that away. For me Pamuk is a unique author in the way he creates profound psychological portraits. And this book dazzles with his brilliance as much as Snow did. The New Life with its complex characters is an examination of life itself and to call it mere fiction might as well be considered an offense to the author. As a result in The New Life we see Pamuk's real characters pushed into endless eccentric journeys to discover themselves. Like most of Pamuk's novel identity is the central theme of The New Life. While in Snow characters rebel to establish their identity, in The New Life characters wander in the Turkish localities and the Anatolian steppe to discover it. Pamuk's strenuous philosophical ramblings is reinforced with poetry and the lines interweave with each other like foamy waves creating an obscure sea in storm where only the best fishermen will be able to fish. So if you are a reader brave enough to go fishing in a stormy night, only then pick up this book because this is not Bertrand Russell lecturing you philosophy but Orhan Pamuk giving you a mystical, philosophical bowl of rice grains and pulses mixed together and you have to separate them one by one. To sum it up: the first reading left me clueless and bored; the second reading beguiled me with its rich literary texture and unfolded the unexciting plot but the third reading unveiled to me the metaphor that The New Life is. Maybe the protagonist Osman is an embodiment of Turkey itself, torn between its tragic past, caramels, kerosene lanterns, Eastern culture and tragedy of its present, coke, hamburgers, Western culture, wandering incessantly like a bus to find and establish its true identity. Efadul Huq is a young reviewer.
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