The red-haired woman
The novel The red-haired woman was written by Orhan Pamuk and was first published in German by Carl Hanser Verlag in 2017 in a translation from Turkish by Gerhard Meier. The original edition was published in 2016 under the title Kırmızı Saçlı Kadın by Yapı Kredı Yayınları. The novel describes the memories of the first-person narrator Cem of an event long ago and its effects on his further life. The author links the based in the modern Turkey of action with the Greek Oedipus -Sage and the legend of Rostam and Sohrab from the Persian national epic Shahnameh . The novel is divided into three parts. The first part comprises chapters 1 to 21, the second part chapters 22 to 43, the third, short part is called "the red-haired woman".
content
First part
The action takes place in Istanbul in the mid-1980s . The mother of the 15-year-old first-person narrator is abandoned by her husband for unknown reasons. During the summer vacation, Cem takes on an assistantship with a well-builder, Master Mahmut, who digs a well in the wilderness far outside Istanbul with primitive means. Between Cem, who grew up largely fatherless, and the master, a father-son relationship develops that is not free from tension, especially because despite weeks of hard work, they do not encounter water. Cem would like to give up, but he feels drawn to an actress, the red-haired woman, who performs with her traveling troupe in the nearby town. After all, he causes an accident on the construction site. Overwhelmed and horrified, Cem flees and leaves the master in the well.
Second part
The second part describes the further fate of Cem. He feels guilty and is constantly expecting his arrest, but doesn't tell anyone what happened. After all, life goes on. Although he had dreamed of becoming a writer, he studied geology, married and became a successful businessman. The marriage remains childless, but Cem and his wife are satisfied. Both travel a lot abroad and develop a special interest in mythology . With this preoccupation, the couple deal with their childlessness on the one hand, but Cem senses that these myths also have something to do with him and his past.
The success of their joint construction company Sohrab and a chance acquaintance at the funeral of his father finally lead Cem back to the place of his guilt. He meets the red-haired woman again and learns that she was once his father's lover and that her now 20-year-old child Enver is probably his son. Finally, Enver leads him to the well in which he left Master Mahmut injured, and a fight develops between father and son.
third part
The short third part is described from the perspective of the red-haired woman. Cem fell into the well. Her son is on remand and accused of murdering his father to secure the inheritance. The reader learns what happened to her and how she protects her son.
Style and motifs
From a narrative point of view, the novel is simpler than many of the author's other works. The plot is told chronologically, linearly. A change of perspective, often found in other Pamuk novels, occurs only once at the end. The language is also kept easy to understand. There are hardly any inner monologues.
The author interweaves the plot with the events of well-known epics from both Eastern and Western mythology. The sagas of Oedipus as well as Rostam and Sohrab stand for different plot models at the end of the novel. In addition, the father-son topic gets another level of meaning. In addition to this topic, the novel is also about guilt and feelings of shame as well as the inability to deal with it. The tension within Turkey between a modern, westernized worldview on the one hand and backward economic methods as well as the Ottoman or Persian traditions on the other is depicted in many facets. The red-haired woman thus deals with topics that also shape other works by the author:
“What literature today should primarily tell and research is mankind's fundamental problem, namely feelings of inferiority, the fear of being excluded and insignificant, injured national pride, sensitivities, various types of resentment and fundamental suspicion, never-ending humiliation fantasies and accompanying nationalistic boasting and arrogance. I understand these fantasies, which are usually expressed in an irrational and exuberant way, all too well as soon as I look into the darkness of my own soul. "
reception
The novel was published in Germany in autumn 2017. The market launch was accompanied by readings by the author. The well-known German-language daily and weekly newspapers have discussed the novel in detail. The response was positive in many cases, although there were also critical discussions and comments.
In his summary of the ZeitOnline, Burkhard Müller emphasizes the effects of the present political situation on the novel:
“At the same time, however, the reader notices how the author shrinks from a clear diagnosis, especially whenever the question of violence comes into play: […] You can feel that Pamuk, like all intellectuals in Turkey today, is afraid before the unpredictable state power. You can hardly blame him for that, because he, the Nobel Prize winner, is the most exposed of them. But it has consequences for his book. It couldn't have turned out to be a complete whole, a masterpiece in the classical sense. "
The author's narrative art is positively highlighted, with some reviewers criticizing the mythical-metaphorical overload:
- “Orhan Pamuk arranged this extremely artistically, but the narrative vitality from earlier works, which often created a pull, suffers considerably from the inflated symbolic ballast. In the case of the red-haired woman , less would have been more. "
- “What is appealing about Pamuk's novel is that it not only plays with the classic Oedipus motif, but also reverses the balance of power by resorting to the Persian epic: a father murders his son. The two terrifying legends, Greek antiquity and Persian legends, Occident and Orient, complement each other. However, Pamuk spreads the father-son dispute as a motif with so much pleasure, peppering his text with so many allusions and quotations that you can literally see the author's note boxes. As a reader, you have the feeling that the author is getting lost in the motif that almost obsessively pervades the novel. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ see: Petr Kucera: Pamuk, Orhan - Kırmızı Saçlı Kadın. In: Munzinger Online / Kindlers Literatur Lexikon in 18 volumes. Updated with articles from the Kindler editorial team, 2009, accessed December 29, 2019 .
- ↑ Orhan Pamuk: The Nobel Prize in Literature 2006. Accessed December 30, 2019 .
- ↑ cf. :: Orhan Pamuk: The red-haired woman. Novel. In: https://www.perlentaucher.de/ . Accessed December 30, 2019 .
- ↑ Burkhard Müller: Orhan Pamuk: A cistern of great feelings . In: The time . December 1, 2017, ISSN 0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed January 3, 2020]).
- ↑ Peter Mohr: Nobody can live without a father. In: http://literaturkritik.de/ . Prof. Dr. Thomas Anz, September 28, 2017, accessed December 28, 2019 .
- ^ Franziska Wolffheim: News from Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk: Oedipus in Istanbul . In: Spiegel Online . September 25, 2017 ( spiegel.de [accessed January 3, 2020]).