In 2019, before parts of the world closed down and things went belly-up, I visited Istanbul, the lifelong love of one of my favourite authors, Orhan Pamuk. Walking around Istanbul, I saw a city that was in flux : a city trying to reconcile it's identity as a metropolis straddled between the East and the West, a city, that has always reached out to the West, but doing so while keeping a foot in the East. Mosques stood beside grotesque centers for hedonism, and the devout and the nihilists went about their day for the most part, without stepping into each others shoes.

The conflict between tradition and modernity, symbolised by the oriental and the occidental in Turkey, is the underlying theme in Pamuk's Silent House. Pamuk masterfully mimics the political and social climate, resulting in mutually assured destruction for everyone involved. Silent House, for me, is not my favourite work of Pamuk, but is definitely a book that I would recommend to fans of the author.