Filling the Gaps in Broken Memory while Renewing the Cityscape: Navigating Belonging in Orhan Pamuk’s The Red-Haired Woman

Simge Yılmaz

doi:10.18778/2083-2931.14.07

Authors

Simge Yılmaz Justus Liebig University Giessen https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9042-7363

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.14.07

Keywords:

memory, Turkey, urban space, Orhan Pamuk, The Red-Haired Woman

Abstract

The Red-Haired Woman, one of Orhan Pamuk’s post-Nobel novels, is a concise, fable-like narrative that delves into the complexities of father-son conflicts. The novel parallels the journey of the protagonist, Cem, with the broader socio-cultural context of modern Turkey. It highlights Cem’s struggle between two ideologically contrasting father figures and draws a compelling analogy between his fragmented memory and Turkey’s cultural memories influenced by both the East and West. This paper explores the application of various memory types in the novel, scrutinizes the reliability of its narrators, and analyzes the depiction of urban space in relation to both individual and national memory, with particular focus on the contractor protagonist.

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Author Biography

Simge Yılmaz, Justus Liebig University Giessen

Simge Yılmaz received her PhD in German literature in 2018 from Ege University Izmir. There she worked as Research Assistant at the Department of German Language and Literature and at the Department of Translation and Interpreting. She is currently working as Research and Teaching Assistant at the Department of Turkology at Justus Liebig University Giessen. Some of her academic publications have been dedicated to questions of the translation and publishing sector, especially to Turkish literature in German translation and the sociology of literature. Her current research interest also extends to ecological issues.

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