Silent House (Turkish 1983, English 2012) By Orhan Pamuk

I’m normally a stickler about reading things in their written sequence, but this was not possible with Silent House by Orhan Pamuk.  Written in 1983, it is the third book by this prolific and award-laden Turkish writer.  The book wasn't translated into English until 2012 after many of his later works had already been translated, including: The White Castle, My Name is Red, and the Museum of Innocence, and the now classic Snow.  His first two books have yet to be translated into English; his most recent book, A Strangeness in My Mind, I reviewed last November.

Pamuk’s works are intimate stories told on top of fascinating bits of Turkish geography and history. Silent House was no different.  It is set in Cennethisar, a resort village south and east of Istanbul, on the Asian side of the Bosphorous. The time span is near 1980, with the country on the verge of a coup, one that would lead to no end of personal troubles for Pamuk. The story profiles the urban & western faction of the population, the old elite if you will; and the rural & mostly poor faction, with an eastern/conservative world view.  Their differences are a key backdrop in seemingly all modern Turkish literature and film.

The story tells of the annual visit of three adult siblings to their aged grandmother's home. Their parents had died years ago; a visit to the cemetery is one of the early chapters of the book.  The siblings, two brothers and a sister, are residents of Istanbul and western in outlook.  They are personally stressed by the country’s political uncertainty, and the possibility the country’s religious majority will assert control.  Change the calendar by 40 years -- in either direction -- and you have the same political uncertainty.  The grandmother is an anchor to a past that no longer exists.

The personal history of the family provides some wickedly sharp tales. Their stories, told collectively, are a representative stand-in of a country having a nervous breakdown.  Each of them will have first person narrative chapters in the book, as does Recep, the grandmother’s live-in loyal/hated housekeeper, caregiver and cook.  Recep is a dwarf, which provides an interesting subplot.  He is also apparently the illegitimate child of the long deceased grandfather.  A psychological analysis of the entire family and some of their friends would find some serious issues, not all of them comic in nature.

Interestingly, one of the siblings is a historian who spends much of his one week vacation visiting the dusty basement of the town’s civic building, reading decades-old records of property transfers and court actions, viewing them as a way to piece together the everyday life of the locals -- perhaps realizing that years from now future historians will view his life in the same way. He states “I would have gladly agreed to spend my whole life in that cool basement if only three square meals could be brought at appropriate intervals, as well as a pack of cigarettes and in the evening a little raki left by the door.”  Novelists, like Orhan Pamuk, are like that -- one could consider that scene an early conceptual draft of his future book Museum of Innocence.  

Recommendation:  You bet.