The New Life

by Orhan Pamuk

First published 1994

Amazon

4.0(114)

University student Osman reads a book whose language appears to illuminate an entirely different existence. He becomes fascinated by Janan, another reader, and by her lover Mehmet, who claims that the book has transformed his life. After witnessing an attempt on Mehmet’s life, Osman leaves his family and joins Janan in searching for the missing man and the source of the text.

Their journey carries them through night buses, provincial towns, roadside cafés and repeated traffic disasters. Readers of the book appear to belong to rival networks that either worship or fear its influence, while Osman’s desire for Janan becomes inseparable from his need to enter the promised new world. The novel is a surreal contemporary quest, so no historical period has been assigned.