Abstract:

The question of Turkish identity is one of the main themes in Orhan Pamuk’s novels. Since his first work, Cevdet Bey and His Sons, Pamuk has deeply explored the identity crises of characters belonging to a world pending between East and West. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the theme of identity crisis in Pamuk’s literary works from an anthropological point of view. The theoretical framework used in this study is based on Edward Said’s work, Orientalism. The analysis focuses particularly on The Black Book, in which the characters seem to be afflicted by two opposite forces: On one hand, they are obsessed with the desire to imitate the West; on the other hand, they are attracted by the dream of a lost Turkish authenticity. This study aims to define the role played by the images of the West in Pamuk’s novels and at point out how these representations have shaped, and continue to shape, the process of the identity construction in the Turkish culture.

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