Silent House [Paperback]

From the Nobel Prize winner and acclaimed author of My Name is Red comes an unforgettable novel about a Turkish family gathering in the shadow of an impending military coup that's “threaded through with ideas about history, religion, memory, class and politics” (The New York Times Book Review). 

In a crumbling mansion in a gentrified former fishing village on the Turkish coast, the widow Fatma awaits the annual visit of her grandchildren: Faruk, a dissipated historian; his sensitive leftist sister, Nilgün; and Metin, a high schooler drawn to the fast life of the nouveaux riche. Bedridden, Fatma is attended by her faithful servant Recep, a dwarf—and her late husband’s illegitimate son. Mistress and servant share memories, and grievances, from the past. But the arrival of Recep’s cousin, Hasan, a fervent right-wing nationalist, threatens to draw the family into the political cataclysm arising from Turkey’s tumultuous century-long struggle for modernity. Written in the 1980s but never before published in English, this spellbinding novel is a stunning addition to the works of Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk.A New York Times Notable Book 

“[A] superb novel, which grips the reader and refuses to let go.”
—The New Yorker

“Propulsive. . . . Reveals a family that is as complicated and volatile as [their] country. . . . The work of a great engineer.”
—The Washington Post

“Inspired and impassioned. . . . Threaded through with ideas about history, religion, memory, class and politics. . . . The reading experience is so very pleasurable.”
—The Nel“9