7 /10 1 Votes
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 Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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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'.