Orhan Pamuk - The Silent House

The Independent“A novel of ideas...” Silent House is both a highly readable fiction and an unsparing portrait of the Turkish intellectual class as perennially naïve, and tragically apathetic, to the point of self-destruction...

New York Times“Pamuk has a flattering faith in his readers’ intelligence...” As it progresses, the atmosphere around you grows close, drained of oxygen, as if the air were full of whispers and some unpleasant event might occur — all of which makes it tricky to explain why the reading experience is so very pleasurable...

Publishers Weekly“A dispiriting tale...” While Pamuk deftly suggests the political strife that roiled Turkish society before the 1980 coup, this narrative never achieves the richness and depth of his later work. All but one of the major characters are neurotic, self-pitying and resentfu

Scotsman“It suffers from verbosity...” There's undoubtedly a good novel buried here, but, sadly, it's never exhumed. Almost every scene – and internal monologue, goes on long after it's made its point. One longs for a director to cry “cut” and it weakens the dramatic and painful end

Guardian“Doubly prescient...” An alertness to political undercurrents foreshadows the writer Pamuk would become in his maturity. The novel is also structurally highly ambitious... Orhan proves himself fully deserving of the call from the Swedish Academy in 2006...