The Red-Haired Woman

by Orhan Pamuk

Overview

From the Nobel Prize winner and best-selling author of Snow and My Name Is Red, a fable of fathers and sons and the desires that come between them.

On the outskirts of a town thirty miles from Istanbul, a master well digger and his young apprentice are hired to find water on a barren plain. As they struggle in the summer heat, excavating without luck meter by meter, the two will develop a filial bond neither has known before—not the poor middle-aged bachelor nor the middle-class boy whose father disappeared after being arrested for politically subversive activities. The pair will come to depend on each other and exchange stories reflecting disparate views of the world. But in the nearby town, where they buy provisions and take their evening break, the boy will find an irresistible diversion. The Red-Haired Woman, an alluring member of a travelling theatre company, catches his eye and seems as fascinated by him as he is by her. The young man's wildest dream will be realized, but, when in his distraction a horrible accident befalls the well digger, the boy will flee, returning to Istanbul. Only years later will he discover whether he was in fact responsible for his master's death and who the redheaded enchantress was.

A beguiling mystery tale of family and romance, of east and west, tradition and modernity, by one of the great storytellers of our time.

Translated from the Turkish by Ekin Oklap.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101974230
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/10/2018
Series:	Vintage International Series
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	210,889
Product dimensions:	5.18(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

ORHAN PAMUK won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel My Name Is Red won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages.

Read an Excerpt

1

I had wanted to be a writer. But after the events I am about to describe, I studied engineering geology and became a building contractor. Even so, readers shouldn’t conclude from my telling the story now that it is over, that I’ve put it all behind me. The more I remember, the deeper I fall into it. Perhaps you, too, will follow, lured by the enigma of fathers and sons.

In 1984, we lived in a small apartment deep in Beşiktaş, near the nineteenth-­century Ottoman Ihlamur Palace. My father had a little pharmacy called Hayat, meaning “Life.” Once a week, it stayed open all night, and my father took the late shift. On those evenings, I’d bring him his dinner. I liked to spend time there, breathing in the medicinal smells while my father, a tall, slim, handsome figure, had his meal by the cash register. Almost thirty years have passed, but even at forty-­five I still love the smell of those old pharmacies lined with wooden drawers and cupboards.

The Life Pharmacy wasn’t particularly busy. My father would while away the nights with one of those small portable television sets so popular back then. Sometimes his leftist friends would stop by, and I would arrive to find them talking in low tones. They always changed the subject at the sight of me, remarking how I was just as handsome and charming as he was, asking what year was I in, whether I liked school, what I wanted to be when I grew up.

My father was obviously uncomfortable when I ran into his political friends, so I never stayed too long when they dropped by. At the first chance, I’d take his empty dinner box and walk back home under the plane trees and the pale streetlights. I learned never to tell my mother about seeing Father’s leftist friends at the shop. That would only get her angry at the lot of them and worried that my father might be getting into trouble and about to disappear once again.

But my parents’ quarrels were not all about politics. They used to go through long periods when they barely said a word to each other. Perhaps they didn’t love each other. I suspected that my father was attracted to other women, and that many other women were attracted to him. Sometimes my mother hinted openly at the existence of a mistress, so that even I understood. My parents’ squabbles were so upsetting that I willed myself not to remember or think about them.

It was an ordinary autumn evening the last time I brought my father his dinner at the pharmacy. I had just started high school. I found him watching the news on TV. While he ate at the counter, I served a customer who needed aspirin, and another who bought vitamin-­C tablets and antibiotics. I put the money in the old-­fashioned till, whose drawer shut with a pleasant tinkling sound. After he’d eaten, on the way out, I took one last glance back at my father; he smiled and waved at me, standing in the doorway.

He never came home the next morning. My mother told me when I got back from school that afternoon, her eyes still puffy from crying. Had my father been picked up at the pharmacy and taken to the Political Affairs Bureau? They’d have tortured him there with bastinado and electric shocks. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

Years ago, soldiers had first come for him the night after the military coup. My mother was devastated. She told me that my father was a hero, that I should be proud of him; and until his release, she took over the night shifts, together with his assistant Macit. Sometimes I’d wear Macit’s white coat myself—­though at the time I was of course planning to be a scientist when I grew up, as my father had wanted, not some pharmacist’s assistant.

When, however, my father again disappeared seven or eight years after that, it was different. Upon his return, after almost two years, my mother seemed not to care that he had been taken away, interrogated, and tortured. She was furious at him. “What did he expect?” she said.

So, too, after my father’s final disappearance, my mother seemed resigned, made no mention of Macit, or of what was to become of the pharmacy. That’s what made me think that my father didn’t always disappear for the same reason. But what is this thing we call thinking, anyway?

By then I’d already learned that thoughts sometimes come to us in words, and sometimes in images. There were some thoughts—­such as a memory of running under the pouring rain, and how it felt—­that I couldn’t even begin to put into words . . . Yet their image was clear in my mind. And there were other things that I could describe in words but were otherwise impossible to visualize: black light, my mother’s death, infinity.

Perhaps I was still a child, and so able to dispel unwanted thoughts. But sometimes it was the other way around, and I would find myself with an image or a word that I could not get out of my head.

My father didn’t contact us for a long time. There were moments when I couldn’t remember what he looked like. It felt as if the lights had gone out and everything around me had vanished. One night, I walked alone toward the Ihlamur Palace. The Life Pharmacy was bolted shut with a heavy black padlock, as if closed forever. A mist drifted out from the gardens of the palace.

Sometime later, my mother told me that neither my father’s money nor the pharmacy was enough for us to live on. I myself had no expenses other than movie tickets, kebab sandwiches, and comic books. I used to walk to Kabataş High School and back. I had friends who trafficked in used comic books for sale or loan. But I didn’t want to spend my weekends as they did, waiting patiently for customers in the backstreets and by the back doors of cinemas in Beşiktaş.

I spent the summer of 1985 helping out at a bookstore called Deniz on the main shopping street of Beşiktaş. My job consisted mainly of chasing off would-­be thieves, most of whom were students. Every now and then, Mr. Deniz would drive with me to Çağaloğlu to replenish his stock. The boss grew fond of me: he noticed how I remembered all the authors’ and publishers’ names, and he let me borrow his books to read at home. I read a lot that summer: children’s books, Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, poetry books, historical novels about the adventures of Ottoman warriors, and a book about dreams. One passage in this latter book would change my life forever.

When Mr. Deniz’s writer friends came by the shop, the boss started introducing me as an aspiring writer. By then I had started harboring this dream and foolishly confessed it to him in an unguarded moment. Under his influence, I soon began to take it seriously.

Reading Group Guide

The discussion questions and suggested reading that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of The Red-Haired Woman, the latest novel by Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk. 

1. At the start of the story, we are told that Cem’s father has disappeared, but that it is not the first time he has disappeared and he “didn’t always disappear for the same reason” (5). What are the reasons for his disappearances and how does his absence affect young Cem? Does Cem ever come to terms with his father’s disappearance?

2. The Red-Haired Woman is said to be a novel in the tradition of the conte philosophique, or philosophical tale. How does the novel fit in with this genre and what are some of the philosophical and social ideas and arguments the novel puts forth? 

3. Evaluate Cem’s relationship with Master Mahmut. Would you characterize it as a father-son relationship? Why or why not? How does it differ from Cem’s relationship with his own father? 

4. A motif of storytelling runs through the novel. Which of the characters are storytellers, and what kinds of stories do they share? Do their stories have anything in common? What seems to be the role or purpose of storytelling? 

5. When Cem shares his version of the story of Oedipus with Master Mahmut, Mahmut replies, “Nobody can escape their fate” (46). Do you agree with him? Why or why not? Does the story ultimately support or overturn the notion of fate? How much do the characters seem to be driven by forces beyond their control and how much seems to be the result of their own actions and free will?

6. When does Cem believe he is “most completely [him]self” (63)? How does he believe a father’s presence affects this? Do you agree with him? 

7. The Red-Haired Woman tells Cem that he should simply find a new father. “We all have many fathers in this country” (86). What does she mean? Who or what are some of the other father figures to which she refers?

8. Why does Cem ultimately abandon the dig and return home? How does his decision affect him in the years ahead? What does Cem decide is “the best thing to do” (117)? Do you agree with him? 

9. Through detailed descriptions of the landscape, the author provides a snapshot of a rapidly changing world. Does the book ultimately offer a statement about progress and modernization versus tradition? Is the modernization of Turkish culture as represented in the book primarily positive? What has changed? What, if anything, seems to remain the same despite modernization?

10. In chapter 28, Cem notices the major difference between the story of Oedipus from the West and the story of Rostam and Sohrab from the East. What is this difference and why might it be notable?

11. After visiting with Mrs. Fikriye the librarian, Cem realizes a new commonality between Oedipus and Sohrab. What is it and how does it affect Cem’s understanding of the events of his own past? What do both stories say about loyalty?

12. Why does Ayşe call in a panic when she realizes that Cem has attended the Sohrab meeting even though he said he would not? What happens to Cem, and who is responsible? Does the book seem to suggest whether this outcome could have been avoided? If so, how?

13. When Gülcihan ends up at the same table as another woman with red hair who challenges the authenticity of her appearance, how does she respond? What does she see as the main difference between her and the other woman? How does this new knowledge contribute to the book’s more expansive dialogues about identity, desire, choice, and fate?

14. Evaluate the corresponding themes of innocence and guilt. Where do these themes surface in the book? Is it easy to determine which of the characters in the book are innocent and which are guilty? Why or why not? Does the book ever answer the question of how one’s innocence or guilt is determined? Why does Cem come to the conclusion that Oedipus and Rostam may be considered innocent, for instance? Through its exploration of these two overlapping themes, what view of morality does the author ultimately offer?

15. Gülcihan wishes to talk to Ayşe to tell her “as women, we were  not responsible for what happened, for it had all been dictated by myth and history” (246). What does she mean by this? Do you agree with her? Why or why not? Are the Red-Haired Woman and Ayşe truly innocent, or are they somehow complicit or even responsible for what has happened?

Editorial Reviews

06/19/2017
Cem was a teenager when, in the mid-1980s, his father left him and his mother and the pharmacy that had supported their family in the Besiktas neighborhood of Istanbul. He soon takes work as an apprentice to a well digger, Master Mahut, and the two are hired to find water on a large, empty plot of land on the outskirts of the city. Master Mahut “knew himself to be among the last practitioners of an art that had existed for thousands of years. So he approached his work with humility.” Over the course of a slow, hot summer—the events of which will haunt Cem forever—that work and that humility create the tension, the boredom, and the bond between the older man and the younger one. Cem catches the eye of an older, red-headed woman in town, and the image of her consumes him. Meanwhile, building a windlass and burrowing deeper into the earth, Cem and Master Mahut swap stories. Cem previously worked in a bookstore, which fueled his reveries about one day becoming a writer and introduced him to seminal stories of fathers and sons, like those of Oedipus, Rostam and Sohrab, and Hamlet. While Cem’s consideration of these stories initially drives the novel, by the end of the book, the contemplation of fatherly themes feels heavy-handed and the story devolves into predictable, almost melodramatic myth. Pamuk’s power continues to lie not with the theatrical but with the quiet and the slow. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Quietly beautiful.”
—Fiammetta Rocco, 1843

“Pamuk’s excellent 10th novel, which focuses on father-son relationships, has a fable-like feel that brings Paul Auster’s work to mind. . . . [It] pores over father-son relationships with almost painful intensity . . . [and] makes the reader feel as if they’ve emerged from the depths of a well into sudden and dazzling light.”
—Alex Preston, Observer (London)
 
“Saturated with sympathy and sense of place, the book charts a boy’s journey into manhood and Turkey’s into irreversible change. But it is above all a book of ideas. Pamuk’s work promotes the fact that we should always interrogate the past but never deny or bury it. History—personal, imagined, actual—reminds us to remember, to think better. . . . This book sings with the power of diverse remembrance.”
—Bettany Hughes, Financial Times (London)
 
“An ending that makes you immediately start the book all over again speaks for itself.”
—The Sunday Times (London)
 
“An intriguing modern take on the Oedipus story. . . . It’s a deep, honest, poignant, painful exploration of humanity’s ability to cover up its own essence with civilised ideas and behaviours.”
—The Herald (London)
 
“Absorbing . . . Pamuk’s intense political parable tells us much about the plight of Turkey today.”
—Evening Standard (London)
 
“Pamuk’s tale of love and death draws heavily on the Oedipus myth, but such is his mastery of storytelling that every character feels fresh, while the vignettes of modern Turkey ring true.”
—Mail on Sunday (London)
 
“The Red-Haired Woman is shorter than Orhan Pamuk’s best-known novels, and is, in comparison, pared down, written with deliberate simplicity—ostensibly by a narrator who knows that he is not a writer, but only a building contractor. Polyphonic narratives are replaced by a powerful, engaging clarity. . . . The themes of parricide and filicide resonate beyond acts of accidental or mindless murder: they explore the loss of connection between generations—which is tragic, yet also necessary. The shifts between generations is beautifully shown through the often hideous changes wrought in Istanbul itself by modernisation.”
—The Spectator (London)
 
“He is a weaver of tales par excellence, with an unmatched sense for the ways that social change affect individual psychology and a restrained, genteel prose style that disguises the unruly passions just below the surface. In this mode he most resembles Ivan Turgenev, the great portraitist of 19th-century Russia… Allusive, enchanting and perfectly controlled.”
—The Wall Street Journal Europe
 
“Playful and unsettling. . . . At times, it seems to owe as much to Dostoevsky as to the epics of the long-distant past; it moves forward by indirection, swapping modes and registers at will. . . . An intriguing addition to his body of work.”
—The New Statesman (London)
 
“A pleasure to read.”
—The Scotsman (Edinburgh)
 
“Orhan Pamuk has written better than most contemporary novelists about the relationship between east and west. . . . The Red-Haired Woman, like all good novels determined to deliver political and social criticism, understands that pleasure in the means of the delivery must equal the value of the thing said.”
—Andrew Motion, The Guardian (London)
 
“It can fall to fiction to remind us of what has come before . . . a tale of slow reveal secrets [and] love.”
—Megan O’Grady, Vogue

“Pamuk masterfully contrasts East with West, tradition with modernity, the power of fables with the inevitability of realism…As usual, Pamuk handles weighty material deftly, and the result is both puzzling and beautiful.”
—Booklist (starred review)

"An extraordinary piece of writing...The Red-Haired Woman is a book that pores over father-son relationships with almost painful intensity...[it] has a lapidary, fable-like feel to it, closer in spirit to earlier novels such as Snow and The Silent House...The twist in the tail  makes the reader feel as if they’ve emerged from the depths of a well into sudden and dazzling light."
—Alex Preson, The Guardian

"Engaging and deftly told...Pamuk's postmodern puzzles are meticulous as ever, and The Red-Haired Woman contains a wealth of atmospheric detail and memorable scenes."
—Marc Edward Hoffman, Bookforum

"Pamuk skillfully intermingles textual traditions and historical time periods, establishing the trademark intertextuality and intertemporality of his fiction...The Red-Haired Woman, though it engages father-and-son conflict, is, importantly, a woman’s story...On one hand, [it] is a novel that celebrates characters who are Oedipalized into the modern neoliberal order. On the other hand, while that celebration exposes familial violence, it conceals a concomitant history of state violence that maintains the patriarchal order. The success of this novel, subtly staged, is that it allows us to consider how these ideologies might coexist."
—Erdağ Göknar, The LA Review of Books

"Pamuk writes with the lean, archaic simplicity of parable, gradually adding moral weight to his tale with each successive chapter...The Red-Haired Woman is a novel of uncommon moral power. It blends myth and life, fatalism and freedom, into a harrowing literary experience. It's the work of a master writer."
—Shelf Awareness

“A giant of world literature, a master storyteller, a Nobel Prize-winner, Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk’s books have sold more than 13 million copies and been translated into more than 63 languages. His latest The Red-Haired Woman is the tale of a young man seeking a father figure but like many of his books it raises larger political questions.”
—Jon Snow, Channel 4 News (London)
 

From the Publisher

★ 06/01/2017
Winner of the Nobel Prize in 2006 for his unflinching and exhaustive ruminations on Istanbul in such books as Snow and My Name Is Red, Pamuk's tenth novel is once again set in his beloved Turkey. The story follows Chem, a boy who finds both an employer and a father figure in Master Mahmut, a local well digger. As they move across the countryside, excavating the hidden waterways underneath the Turkish landscape, they also trade stories and myths about civilization. Despite his age, Chem has a sexual awakening with the mysterious redhead of the title whose hair is cut short by an ethical choice that will haunt him into adulthood. After acquiring both wealth and a fascination with tales of patricide and filicide, Chem is drawn back to the land and wells of his youth. Reality and myth intertwine to create a twist that will send readers back to page one with hurried excitement. VERDICT As much a meditation on the inescapability of fate as a classic murder mystery, this novel will both appease fans of Pamuk's bibliography and delight first-time readers. [See Prepub Alert, 2/13/17.]—Joshua Finnell, Los Alamos National Lab., NM

Library Journal

2017-06-06
A youthful misdeed prompts lifelong guilt in the protagonist of this brooding novel about fathers, sons, and the power of stories by Nobel laureate Pamuk (A Strangeness in My Mind, 2015, etc.).In the summer of 1986, high school student Cem Çelik is working for a well digger on the outskirts of Istanbul. The work is backbreaking, but Cem forms a bond with Master Mahmut, telling us rather too many times that the well digger fills the void left by his vanished father, a left-wing militant who later turns out to be not in jail but with another woman. Fathers and sons just can't get it right in this somber tale crammed with references to the story of Oedipus and its linked opposite, the Iranian national epic Shahnameh, in which a father unknowingly kills his son. Cem becomes obsessed with the Shahnameh after he accidentally drops a heavy bucket onto Master Mahmut at the bottom of a well, panics, and leaves town without telling anyone. As the story moves through several decades in Cem's adult life, he hardly gives a thought to the red-haired actress who improbably slept with her teenage admirer after a performance at a tent theater near the well site—but that will turn out to be a fatal mistake. The novel has Pamuk's customary wealth of atmospheric detail about his beloved Istanbul and the perennial conflict in Turkish politics (and in the Turkish soul) between secular modernism and traditional values. It's also ham-fistedly obvious and relentlessly overdetermined; Pamuk seems to be trying for the stark authority of folklore and myth, but the novel's realistic trappings don't comfortably accommodate this intent. There are some bright spots: Pamuk paints a moving portrait of Cem's childless marriage, and a searing final monologue by the red-haired woman very nearly redeems the flawed narrative that precedes it. A disappointment, though no book by this skillful and ambitious writer is without interest.

Kirkus Reviews