Harman Patil (Editor)

The New Life (novel)

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Original title
  
Yeni Hayat

Language
  
Turkish

Published in English
  
1998

Originally published
  
1994

Page count
  
296

Translator
  
Güneli Gün

3.5/5
Goodreads

Country
  
Turkey

Publication date
  
1994

Pages
  
296

Author
  
Orhan Pamuk

Publisher
  
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The New Life (novel) t3gstaticcomimagesqtbnANd9GcTGOjnz92UqktgXah

Genres
  
Novel, Fiction, Magical Realism

Similar
  
The Black Book, The White Castle, The Silent House, My Name Is Red, Cevdet Bey and His Sons

The New Life (Yeni Hayat in Turkish) is a 1994 novel by Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, translated to English in 1998 by Güneli Gün.

Contents

Plot

The plot centers around a young engineering student in Istanbul who discovers a "new life" in the pages of a book of the same name. The protagonist is so thrilled by this novel that he sets off in search of the new life it describes, finding a number of other readers who have become similarly consumed as well as a few people who seek to destroy the book because of the effect it has on its followers. No passages from the book are revealed, and readers of the novel are left to hypothesize about its nature through the actions of the main character and other obsessed readers.

Comparisons to other writers

Pamuk's stream of consciousness writing style is reminiscent of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. His agitated, phantasmagorical prose style has been compared to Franz Kafka's body of work, too.The New Life has explored the Kafkaesque predicament and bewilderment of Osman in Istanbul, giving the story a universal 'light touch of Kafka'.

References

The New Life (novel) Wikipedia