《Silent House》

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.

奥尔罕·帕慕克(Orhan Pamuk)（1952.06.07～ ）于1952年出生于伊斯坦布尔，学习建筑的他是当今土耳其最重要也最畅销的作家。文学评论家把他和普鲁斯特、托马斯?曼、卡尔维诺、波赫士、安伯托·艾柯等大师相提并论。自1979年出版第一部小说《塞夫得特州长和他的儿子们》以来，帕慕克的写作生涯可谓著述等身，曾获得欧洲发现奖、美国独立小说奖、法国文艺奖、德国书业和平奖等多种荣耀。1985年出版第一本历史小说《白色城堡》，这本小说让他享誉全球，纽约时报书评称他：“一位新星正在东方诞生——土耳其作家奥罕.帕慕克。”

奥尔罕·帕慕克出生于伊斯坦堡，在伊斯坦布尔科技大学主修建筑。他的作品曾获得欧洲发现奖、美国外国小说独立奖、都柏林奖等等。其中，《我的名字叫红》获得了包括法国文学奖、意大利格林扎纳·卡佛文学奖和都柏林文学奖在内的欧洲三大文学奖项。作品已被译成20多种语言出版。