The Red-Haired Woman [Paperback]

From the Nobel Prize winner and best-selling author ofSnowandMy Name Is Red, a fable of fathers and sons and the desires that come between them.

On the outskirts of a town thirty miles from Istanbul, a well digger and his young apprentice—a boy fleeing the confines of his middle class home—are hired to find water on a barren plain. As they struggle in the summer heat, excavating without luck meter by meter, they develop a filial bond neither has known before. But when the boy catches the eye of a stunning red-haired woman who seems as fascinated by him as he is by her, the events that ensue change the young man’s life forever and haunt him for the next thirty years. A tale of family and romance, of youth and old age, of tradition and modernity,The Red-Haired Womanis a beguiling mystery from one of the great storytellers of our time.“[Pamuk] is a weaver of tales par excellence.” —The Wall Street Journal

“A parable about present-day Turkey. . . . It blends the close observation of details with the broad brushstrokes usually associated with myth-making and fables.” —The Guardian
 
“An amazingly gifted writer.” —NPR

“Beautifully written . . . a thoughtful consideration of Western and Eastern myths of fathers and sons, and the limits of free will.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
 
“Saturated with sympathy and sense of place. . . . This book sings with the power of diverse remembrance.” —Financial Times

“Extraordinary. . . . The reader feel[s] as if they’ve emerged from the depths of a well into sudden and dazzling light.” —The Observer
 
“Pamuk traces the disastrous effects of a Turkish teenager’s brief encounter with a married actress, elaborating on his fiction’s familiar themes: the tensions between East lă5