A review by danielad
The Red-Haired Woman by Orhan Pamuk

5.0

This is such an excellent novel. Having read a number of Pamuk's other works, this one stands out for its concision and poignancy. As many other reviews have already noted, the novel plays with the myths of Oedipus and Sohrab: the western Oedipus unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother, the eastern Sohrab is killed by his father Rostam. As in all his other novels, Pamuk flirts with the Turkish struggle to situate itself between the east and the west, the traditional and the modern, the secular and the religious. This struggle is reflected in Cem's western, secular, and modern identity, and his son Enver's religious and, perhaps, more eastern identity.