Synopsis
Osman is a young university student whose life is changed by a chance encounter with a mysterious book. Osman becomes obsessed with the book, which seems to contain all the magic and power of life and love. Romantic and elusive, The New Life is a rhapsody to love and an investigation into the shadowy nature of self.
Reviews
A quirky and fascinating exercise in postmodernist metaphysics from the acclaimed Turkish author of The White Castle (1991) and The Black Book (1995). Its protagonist and narrator, Osman, is a young university student in Istanbul who, having seen a beautiful girl carrying a book one day, comes upon another copy, and discovers as he reads it that his life is instantly changed (``the world where I lived ceased to be mine, making me feel I have no domicile'') and that he is compelled to follow wherever the book's spell leads him. He finds the girl (Janan, also a student) and joins her search for her missing lover Mehmet--another student, as it turns out, who has abandoned his studies and spends his days endlessly re-reading and hand-copying that very book, for ``enthusiasts'' who support his labors in order to possess the book themselves. Osman loses Janan, finds her, then loses her again for good following their failure to rescue Mehmet from his obsession. And Osman/Pamuk opens up level beyond level of meaning and implication, as he travels to various locales that seem to promise a solution to the mystery of the book (whose contents are never fully revealed) and its readers--most notably, the mansion of Mehmet's father Doctor Fine, a wealthy merchant, who believes his countrymen's infatuation with the book represents a denial of traditional Turkish culture resulting from a ``Great Conspiracy'' involving ``agents of the CIA and Coca- Cola.'' Years later, having married and fathered a child, Osman learns more about the book's author and the disturbingly mundane sources of its inspiration--and, in a clever surprise delayed until the novel's last page, understands what the promised ``new life'' is and why he and others have sought it so eagerly. Intricate and teasing, this Borgesian chiaroscuro urbanely surveys the intermingling of East and West and adds a brilliant new chapter to Pamuk's ongoing investigation of the enigmas of individual and national identity. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Osman is an ordinary engineering student in Istanbul until he comes across a book that changes his life. A sort of quasimystical tract, it provides a guide to a new life that is so irresistible Osman becomes obsessed by it. Soon he meets up with two more devotees of the book, the beautiful Janan and Mahmet, her boyfriend. When Mahmet suddenly disappears, Janan and Osman, who is now totally in love with Janan, set out to find him. As they head for the provinces, the novel switches gears from the merely mysterious to a sort of Turkish magical realism: the book's author turns out to be the best friend of Osman's father; the couple unearth a CIA-like organization that keeps track of the book and its readers; then they meet up with a Doctor Delicate, who sees the book as a pernicious Western influence. Finally, Osman alone finds Mahmet, bringing the story to a sort of conclusion. Recommended for the reader who wants something truly different. Brian Kenney
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