The Red-Haired Woman

The haunting, evocative new novel from the Nobel Prize-winning author whose compelling characters have charted Turkey’s increasingly troubled times.

‘She was looking at me as if she knew everything about me, as if she’d known me for years.’

From the Nobel Prize winner and bestselling author Orhan Pamuk is The Red-Haired Woman, a fable of fathers and sons and the desires that come between them.

On the outskirts of a town thirty miles from Istanbul, a master well digger and his apprentice are hired to find water on a barren plain. As they struggle in the summer heat, the two develop a filial bond neither has known before and exchange stories reflecting disparate views of the world. But in the nearby town, the boy finds an irrestistable diversion- the Red-Haired Woman, an alluring member of a traveling theater company.

When the young man’s wildest dream is realized, in his distraction a horrible accident befalls the well digger and the boy flees, returning to Istabul. Only years later will he discover whether he was in fact responsible for his master’s death and who the red-headed enchantress was.

The Red-Haired Woman is a beguiling mystery tale of family and romance, of east and west, tradition and modernity, by one of the great storytellers of our time.

Translated from the Turkish by Ekin Oklap.