A parable about love, literature and fanaticism. A young university student becomes obsessed with a magical book that delves into the dangerous natures of love and self. Abandoning his studies and his family, he goes with the beautiful Janan on a search for the meaning of the book's darker secrets.
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
In his native Turkey, author Orhan Pamuk's novel The New Life is a huge hit. Now English-language readers have an opportunity to sample this unusual book for themselves. The New Life begins with the sentence "I read a book one day and my whole life was changed." That book leads the narrator, a young man named Osman, on a wild journey in the company of Janan, a mysterious young woman in search of her lover, Mehmet. He had actually managed to enter--and escape--the world of the book. In the course of their travels, Osman and Janan are involved in a bloody bus wreck from which they emerge with new identities; they meet several "false" Mehmets; Janan mysteriously vanishes; and Osman eventually encounters a family friend who may or may not be the author of the life-changing book and possibly of The New Life itself.
In case you hadn't already guessed, The New Life is strictly postmodernist fare, where plot and character are minimal and time and space tend to bend and warp in unexpected ways. The author's vision is certainly original, his descriptions of violence and Turkish culture particularly strong. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Osman is an ordinary engineering student in Istanbul until he comes across a book that changes his life. A sort of quasimystical tract, it provides a guide to a new life that is so irresistible Osman becomes obsessed by it. Soon he meets up with two more devotees of the book, the beautiful Janan and Mahmet, her boyfriend. When Mahmet suddenly disappears, Janan and Osman, who is now totally in love with Janan, set out to find him. As they head for the provinces, the novel switches gears from the merely mysterious to a sort of Turkish magical realism: the book's author turns out to be the best friend of Osman's father; the couple unearth a CIA-like organization that keeps track of the book and its readers; then they meet up with a Doctor Delicate, who sees the book as a pernicious Western influence. Finally, Osman alone finds Mahmet, bringing the story to a sort of conclusion. Recommended for the reader who wants something truly different. Brian Kenney
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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More About the Author
Orhan Pamuk, described as 'one of the freshest, most original voices in contemporary fiction' (Independent on Sunday), is the author of many books, including The White Castle, The Black Book and The New Life. In 2003 he won the International IMPAC Award for My Name is Red, and in 2004 Faber published the translation of his novel Snow, which The Times described as 'a novel of profound relevance to the present moment'. His most recent book was Istanbul, described by Jan Morris as 'irresistibly seductive'. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. He lives in Istanbul.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Novelist's Novel,
By e. verrillo (williamsburg, ma) - See all my reviews
This review is from: New Life (Paperback)
The first sentence of The New Life is: "I read a book one day and my whole life was changed." As the main character reads, he is infused with light, and literally knocked off the path of his life. From that point on, dear Reader, abandon your preconceptions of what you think a novel should be, for The New Life won't conform to them.
The New Life can best be described as a prolonged, complex and highly poetic metaphor. If you try to take the endless journeys, the long rambling philosphical asides, indeed, the characters themselves, at face value you will find yourself frustrated by the obscurities, the meanderings, and the lack of tidy resolutions which Pamuk manages to dish out in heaping portions from the first to the last page. In one sense this book is a typical "road story" taking us on an interminable bus ride with the protagonist as he searches for the meaning of life, love, and peace (and ultimately death). Osman, our romantic hero, is beset both by the book he reads and by love in equal portions. In fact, the two become so intertwined that it is almost impossible for the reader (or the author) to make a clear distinction between the transformation precipitated by the book, and the similar transformation produced by the honey-haired beauty who leads him on his long journey into ... what? This is where most readers will be tempted to toss up their hands. What is our hero seeking? What is this New Life which ruins his placid existence? Why does he seek it with such fervor? Why does it lead to conspiracies, counterconspiracies, assassination? Pamuk doesn't clarify these central questions for us. Instead he heaps on multiple confusions--the main character and his nemesis have the same name, the same "father", the same girlfriend, the same body type, making the reader doubt the reality of either of these characters. The obsessiveness of Osman and the increasing absurdity of the interactions he has with just about everybody throw a constant curve on the plot, and on our willingness to cooperate with it. So, with all this confusion, obscurity, and outright ridiculousness, (not to mention dizzying shifts of address) how does The New Life manage to work as a novel? The answer is that it doesn't. The New Life is a parable. Our hero is Turkey itself, caught between the absurdity/tragedy of his/its own past (caramels and kerosene lanterns) and the absurdity/tragedy of his/its present (Coke and hamburgers). The tug-of-war between East and West which characterizes Turkey infuses this entire book. By the end, we are filled with Turkey's restless, unrequited, and unfulfilling love for that which was, and for the "progress" which can never be--Osman's seesaw between self-destructiveness and Nirvana. Orhan Pamuk is perhaps the most original writer to have emerged in the past two decades. As an author, and as a philospher, he is not afraid to take risks. That quality makes this book a "heavy read", but if you can manage to stick with it, it will infuse you with light, because as Pamuk says "A good book is something that reminds us of the whole world." Like all good parables, The New Life reminds us of ourselves.
18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
In search of a new identity,
This review is from: The New Life (Paperback)
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.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Phenomenal exploration of identity and happiness,
By Glutton for books (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The New Life (Paperback)
I do not read much fiction, but Orhan Pamuk is an author who writes novels with great psychological examinations of life, so that to classify them as fiction does them a great disservice. Like all of Pamuk's novels, identity is a central theme in "The New Life." Turkish life and the change its people experience are so full of vibrance that it constitutes a separate character. Very few nonfiction history, political or economic works do justice to the complex state of Turkish affairs, but one receives a deep understanding of modern Turkey from reading Pamuk's novels; even when they are set in the past.
The novel's central character Osman is on a quest of self-discovery; phyiscally he is searching for a book of answers. Chief among these answers that the book is believed to hold is obtaining happiness, which Osman feels for the first time when he is infatuated with Janan, in the throws of love or obessession. Let the reader decide as it is part of Osman's journey too. Of course it woudl be too neat if Jahan simply returned the infatuation. She is obssessed with another character; but is it the person or his ideas that hold her captive? The book is less about finding the object than it is about the journey and what articualtes a search for intangible things that every one seeks or expects to find from life, and why they feel bitter disappoitment, when they believe that their lives are void of such things. The expectations embodied in the novel include universal concepts such as love, happiness, and a sense of belonging to soemthing greater than one's self. Things we are told we will have if we do all that is expected of us, as people. And things that make us feel less full as individuals when whe feel that we lack them. However, these are often sentiments that feel most out of reach when we grab for them. How can we prove they are there, if reaching for them makes them slip away? Osman does a lot of grabbing. The actions in this book are simple but the poetic writing style is full of philosphy that enriches the reader by following Osman's quest. This is a book that can be read again and again, with greater meaning derived from each approach. And this is a book that has to be read, not only because everyone has Osman's questions at some point or many times in their lives, but also because the type of deep thinking that the book engenders could enver be embodied in a movie adaption. The book reminds people why reading fiction can still be an important and fulfilling an activity for personal development.
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