Customer Reviews

Other Colours

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Of course, we appreciate Orhan Pamuk's defense of freedom of expression (`linked with pride and dignity') and his viewpoints on the Armenian genocide, the war in Iraq (`This savage, cruel war is the shame of America and the West') or the novel (`Novels are only valuable as the questions they raise about the shape and nature of life'). But, this book is not much more than a family album, irrelevant for outsiders.

Also, I don't agree with his vision on some of Dostoyevsky's books reviewed here.
The theme in `Notes from the Underground' is not `the joys of degradation', but the, for Dostoyevsky, disasters of reason: `Consciousness only generates questions, never-ending doubt and torments until man lays on his deathbed. ... People should be stupid and act.'
`The Demons' is in no way Dostoyevsky's most comic book. The first edition was heavily censored: the confession of pedophilia by the main character was left out.
Scholars have pointed their finger (like the child in the book) at what could have been a Dostoyevskyan Lolita problem. Also, in `Winter Notes on Summer Impressions' the author meets in the London Haymarket a child of only six, black and blue beaten, barefoot, who tries to lure him to have sex with her.
Nabokov's `Ada' is a direct confrontation with the `Viennese Delegation'.

This book contains valuable information on the author's own novels.

Only for Orhan Pamuk fans.