The Red - Haired Woman - Tapa dura

Saturated with sympathy and sense of place, the book charts a boy's journey into manhood and Turkey's into irreversible change. But it is above all a book of ideas. Pamuk's work promotes the fact that we should always interrogate the past but never deny or bury it. History - personal, imagined, actual - reminds us to remember, to think better... This book sings with the power of diverse remembrance. (Financial Times)

Absorbing... Pamuk's intense political parable tells us much about the plight of Turkey today. (Evening Standard)

Pamuk's tale of love and death draws heavily on the Oedipus myth, but such is his mastery of storytelling that every character feels fresh, while the vignettes of modern Turkey ring true. (Mail on Sunday)

The Red-Haired Woman is shorter than Orhan Pamuk's best-known novels, and is, in comparison, pared down, written with deliberate simplicity - ostensibly by a narrator who knows that he is not a writer, but only a building contractor. Polyphonic narratives are replaced by a powerful, engaging clarity. The themes of parricide and filicide resonate beyond acts of accidental or mindless murder: they explore the loss of connection between generations - which is tragic, yet also necessary. The shifts between generations is beautifully shown through the often hideous changes wrought in Istanbul itself by modernisation. (Spectator)

He is a weaver of tales par excellence, with an unmatched sense for the ways that social change affect individual psychology and a restrained, genteel prose style that disguises the unruly passions just below the surface. In this mode he most resembles Ivan Turgenev, the great portraitist of 19th-century Russia. Allusive, enchanting and perfectly controlled (Wall Street Journal Europe)

Pamuk's excellent 10th novel, which focuses on father-son relationships, has a fable-like feel that brings Paul Auster's work to mind. pores over father-son relationships with almost painful intensity. makes the reader feel as if they've emerged from the depths of a well into sudden and dazzling light (Observer)

An ending that makes you immediately start the book all over again speaks for itself. (Sunday Times)

An intriguing modern take on the Oedipus story. It's a deep, honest, poignant, painful exploration of humanity's ability to cover up its own essence with civilised ideas and behaviours. (Herald)

A rich and crisp addition to the Pamuk canon (Financial Times)

The Red-Haired Woman, like all good novels determined to deliver political and social criticism, understands that pleasure in the means of the delivery must equal the value of the thing said. (Andrew Motion Guardian)

Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel My Name Is Red won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His most recent novel, A Strangeness in My Mind, was an international bestseller and was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages. He lives in Istanbul.