If you like Orhan Pamuk....

January 3, 2010 4:07 PM

What author would you recommend to an individual whose favorite writer is Orhan Pamuk but who has already read all of his available works in English?
posted by Morrigan to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

I quite like Patrick Leigh Fermor, especially his Between The Woods And The Water, a 1986 book in which he reminisces about a walking trip from Holland to Turkey, which he began in 1933. It's incredibly lovely and a captivating portrait at a rapidly disappearing time in Europe. Of course, it's a memoir, not a novel. But it reminded me of Pamuk's own memoir-of-sorts, Istanbul.

Ismail Kadare is an Albania writer whose novels - the half dozen or so I've read, at any rate - are pretty great. They seem to me to occupy a similar space as Pamuk works such as Snow. It's worth noting that Albania was Ottoman (Turkish) territory for a long period, and its probably Turkey's literary traditions which have left a mark on Kadare's work, so a similarity to Pamuk is no coincidence.
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 5:04 PM on January 3, 2010 [1 favorite]

If it's the style and philosophical/historical concerns (for want of a better phrase) rather than the setting, I'll suggest Ronan Bennett - The Catastrophist and Havoc In its Third Year are both excellent. Not claiming they're terribly similar authors, merely that I've enjoyed them both and think they appeal to similar things in me as a reader.
Other than that, the classic Turkish novel in translation prior to the emergence of Pamuk was Memed, My Hawk by Yaşar Kemal, which is worth anyone and everyone's time.
posted by Abiezer at 5:41 PM on January 3, 2010

Seconding Kadare.
posted by plep at 11:02 AM on January 4, 2010

Strongly seconding Fermor, whose travel trilogy began with A Time of Gifts. There are many waiting for part three, which was supposed to come out in 2007.

Fermor is 94 and only now learning how to type....
posted by IndigoJones at 12:17 PM on January 4, 2010

I enjoyed My Name is Red for the same reasons I liked The Name of the Rose. So: Umberto Eco.
posted by roger ackroyd at 12:59 PM on January 4, 2010