Silent House

Three grandchildren travel out from Istanbul to spend a summer week with their elderly grandmother in a decaying seaside house, and the visit exposes everything the family has left unsaid. Orhan Pamuk wrote this novel early in his career. Chapters rotate between narrators, so the same week is refracted through an old woman's memories, a historian's disappointments, a student's politics and a relative's resentment. Set against a period of political tension in Turkey, the book holds private grievance and national argument within the same frame, and the prose is patient rather than showy. Points readers mention most: • Multiple first-person narrators with sharply different voices • A family drama tied closely to Turkish political history • Translated literary fiction from a Nobel laureate • Issued in this English edition by Penguin Publications Suited to readers of translated fiction and family sagas, and to anyone exploring Pamuk's work, from Boipoka.