The apartment building that we lived in during Covid had a community library of sorts on the garage level. Stocked by the hundreds of residents, the three shelves carried a rotating assortment of fiction, self-help books, partisan political tomes, and biographies. It was there that I picked up The Red-Haired Woman by Orhan Pamuk. I'd heard of this fairly prolific Turkish writer but I'd never read anything by him other than leafing through his well-reviewed Snow at a bookstore once. On the surface the novel is about a boy serving as a well apprentice in post-WWII Turkey, two possible murders, one case of possible incest, and late 20th century capitalism in the country. These subject cut quite a wide swath, particularly because Pamuk uses them comment on political exile and the deep cutting power of father-son relationships.
Pamuk uses two myths to frame a narrative which flows quickly--the first you've heard of: the Oedipus tale where the son unknowingly kills his father; the second you likely haven't Ferdawsi's Rustam and Sohrab where the father unknowingly kills his son. The latter is taken from the epic Persian poem Shahnameh which tells both the mythical and quasi-true history of the Persian empire.
From the novel's title one might assume the tale is about the enigmatic red-haired woman, however, it's clear she's a mere backdrop by which Pamuk explores the ways in which a father and son can both love and hurt each other and the way this relationship spills over into society at large. And despite claiming that Snow would be his first and only political novel, its obvious that much of this exploration is also a commentary on the rise of President Erdogan, particularly with the following quote:
t seems we would all like a strong, decisive father telling us what to do and what not to do. Is it because it is so difficult to distinguish what we should and shouldn't do, what is moral and right from what is sinful and wrong? Or is it because we constantly need to be reassured that we are innocent and have not sinned? Is the need for a father always there, or do we feel it only when we are confused, or anguished, when our world is falling apart?"
Key Quotes:
I had wanted to be a writer. But after the events I am about to describe, I studied engineer in 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 father and sons.
Their search for lost fathers had cast both Oedipus and Sohrab far from the cities and the lands to which they belonged, into places where, vulnerable to exploitation by their countries' foes, they ended up traitors. In both stories, loyalty to family, to king, to father, and to dynasty is placed above loyalty to nation, and the protagonists' treasonous predicaments are never emphasized.
