This month will see the launch of the English-language translation of Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk’s eighth novel, “The Museum of Innocence. This is Pamuk’s first piece of fiction since he won the coveted literary award in 2006. In Turkey – where he is read avidly – his books sell hundreds of thousands of copies. This time around there are fans across the globe, all awaiting his latest offering.
Nobel laureates such as Harold Pinter or Toni Morrison generally receive the award in the twilight of their careers to honor their achievements. Pamuk is different at only 57 years of age. We’re face-to-face with a novelist at the height of his prodigious powers -a man charting the zeitgeist of an era when East and West, Islam and Christianity, absolutism and the enlightenment appear locked in mortal combat.
Indeed, Pamuk’s greatest contribution has been his impassioned portrayal of the ongoing tussle between the forces of Islamic conservatism and those who would advocate a more modernist, secular approach for Turkey.
In “My Name is Red, his sixth novel set among a group of court miniaturist painters in the 16th century court of Murat III, he presents the divide between East and West in terms of aesthetic styles.
On one side there were those who dared to adopt the Humanist/Renaissance conventions – the use of the perspective and the near obsessive focus on the human form.
On the other, there were the more orthodox that retained the flat traditional style of painting. They refused to render the human form.
Writing with verve and distinction, Pamuk resembles a latter-day seer, probing and testing his subjects: creativity, imagination, faith, betrayal, duty, honor and death.
Pamuk’s novels resonate with us in Southeast Asia. The challenges we face are not dissimilar. Muslims among us have to decide how we interpret and implement the word of Allah in societies vastly different from 7th century Mecca.
What of the rights of women? How do we balance the prerequisites of the Quran with human weakness and the demands of technological change? What of injustice and corruption?
In his 2004 novel “Snow, Pamuk writes of a town on the fringes of the Anatolian peninsula, tucked away in crevasses of both history and geography. This region has historically passed backwards and forwards between the Russians, the Georgians and the Persians. At the same time there is the haunting absence of tens of thousands of Armenians who were marched away never to return some 90 years ago.
The dreary town of Kars is afflicted by a spate of suicides of young women wearing headscarves. A poet and returned political exile named Ka arrives to investigate the deaths. In actual fact he’s drawn by something far more alluring, a gorgeous divorcee named Ipek – an unrequited flame from his student days.
Ka is a feckless hero: naive, overly emotional and easily duped. His moral compass is easily distorted, especially when the lovely Ipek stalks into view.
With “Snow we’re far from the faux cosmopolitanism of his upcoming novel set in bourgeois Istanbul. Moreover, a snowstorm further isolates the town, triggering a coup, a series of brutal murders and a frightening sense that modernity’s only hope in confronting conservatism is through violence and repression.
Pamuk’s novels capture the confusion caused by the push-and-pull between the two forces. He is torn between identifying with the Western, modernizing secularists and his attraction to the passion and courage of the Islamic political activists.
Pamuk’s ambivalence toward the creeping Islamization of Turkey is expressed through Ka’s growing sympathy with the Islamic political activists he meets. In parallel with real life, Turkey’s staunch secularism is also in decline, foreshadowed by the rise of a bureaucratic and institutional Islam.
Interestingly, Soner Cagaptay, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued in Newsweek that the isolated secular elite, fatigued and uninterested in the masses, is responsible for the downfall of its Kemalist ideology. As he says: “No one can accuse the Islamists of lacking vision.
Pamuk’s conclusions may be harsh but there’s no doubt he’s well aware of the stakes involved. His novel is a proverbial warning that we cannot remain impassive to the current debates on religion and public life – something that all of us would do well to realize.
Karim Raslanis a columnist who divides his time between Malaysia and Indonesia. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) with permission from The Jakarta Globe.
