SOURCE: Paddy, David Ian. Review of The New Life, by Orhan Pamuk. Review of Contemporary Fiction 18, no. 3 (fall 1998): 249-50.

In the following review, Paddy praises The New Life for its postmodern examination of literature and its emphasis on contemporary Turkish culture.

Have you ever read a book that was so overwhelming, so utterly life-changing that you had to find everyone else who has read it and force it upon those who haven't? This impulse provides the basis for Turkish writer Pamuk's latest novel: in The New Life a man, Osman, encounters a book so earth shattering that it changes his entire life. He seeks out others who have read the same book, and he sets out on a bizarre journey to find in this world the new life proposed within the book.

Pamuk's novel may strike readers as strongly reminiscent of many other works (but in a book...