In his brilliant 1990 novel The Black Book, the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk embarked on a dizzying journey through the heart of Istanbul; in The New Life, the fastestselling novel in Turkish literary history, he ventures into the countryside to tell the story of a young student's odyssey across the vast spaces of Anatolia in pursuit of the secrets of a magical book. Like The Black Book it is part detective story, part metaphor for the process of reading, part travelogue; Pamuk has been compared to Jorge Luis Borges, Unberto Eco and Italo Calvino but his blend of fantasy and reality, overlaid with a dry, self-deprecating humour that is typically Turkish, is unique.
Arminta Wallace
