Silent House

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

Orhan Pamuk, Robert Finn

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2012
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780571276028
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

In an old mansion in Cennethisar, a former fishing village near Istanbul, an old widow Fatma awaits the annual summer visit of her grandchildren. She has lived in the village for decades, ever since her husband, an idealistic young doctor, first arrived to serve the poor fishermen. Now mostly bedridden, she is attended by her faithful servant Recep, a dwarf and the doctor's illegitimate son. Under the creeping shadow of right-wing nationalism and political revolution, they share memories, and grievances, of the early years, before their home became a high-class resort.

Her visiting grandchildren are Faruk, a dissipated failed historian; his sensitive leftist sister, Nilgun, has yet to discover the real-life consequences of highminded politics; and Metin, a high school student drawn to the fast life of the nouveaux riches, who dreams of going to America. But it is Recep's nephew Hassan, a high-school dropout, lately fallen in with right-wing nationalism, who will draw this family into the revolution and the growing political cataclysm issuing from Turkey's tumultuous century-long struggle for modernity.

By turns deeply moving, hilarious, and terrifying, Silent House pulses with the energy of a great writer's early work even as it offers beguiling evidence of the mature genius for which Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in 2006, would later be world renowned.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• CONTENTS
• 1: Recep Goes to the Movies
• 2: Grandmother Waits in Bed
• 3: Hasan and Friends Take Up a Collection
• 4: Faruk at the Wheel
• 5: Metin Wastes No Time
• 6: Recep Serves Breakfast
• 7: Grandmother Offers Her Prayers
• 8: Hasan Procrastinates
• 9: Faruk Sees Stories in the Archives
• 10: Metin Socializes
• 11: Grandmother Takes Out the Silver Candy Bowl
• 12: Hasan Is Vexed by Mathematics
• 13: Recep Picks Up Some Milk and Some Other Things
• 14: Faruk Remembers the Pleasure of Reading
• 15: Metin Goes Along for the Ride and for Love
• 16: Grandmother Listens to the Night
• 17: Hasan Acquires Another Comb
• 18: Faruk Needs to Find a Story
• 19: Recep Serves the Quiet Dinner Table
• 20: Hasan Feels the Pressure of Peers
• 21: Metin Spins Out of Control
• 22: Hasan Does His Duty
• 23: Fatma Refuses to Live with Sin
• 24: Faruk and Nilgün See Everything from Above
• 25: Metin Pushes His Luck and His Car
• 26: Hasan Tries to Return the Record and the Notebook
• 27: Recep Takes Nilgün Back Home
• 28: Faruk Watches a Belly Dancer
• 29: Grandmother Receives Visitors in the Night
• 30: Recep Tries to Take Care of Everyone
• 31: Hasan Goes His Way
• 32: Fatma Finds Consolation in Holding a Book
• About the Author
• ALSO BY ORHAN PAMUK
• Copyright