Does the Dog Die? A Short Review of The White Castle, By Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk is the Turkish writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature around the same time that the Turks were prosecuting him for mentioning the slaughter of Kurds and Armenians in Anatolia. You can read all about him on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orhan_Pamuk

The White Castle is a short book, unlike some of Pamuk’s later work. And it really reminds me of Jorge Luis Borges, which is neither a positive nor a negative. You either want to read Borges or you don’t. I have mixed feelings about him, and I had mixed feelings about The White Castle, even though I’d previously read Pamuk’s My Name Is Red and thought it to be beyond brilliant.

Anyway, The White Castle is MOSTLY SAFE for animal lovers. Pamuk hints at 4 unpleasant images that I counted, but ultimately he pulls his punches and doesn’t describe them, he just lets you know that these things happened, and they’re in passing. There are no animal characters as such, so there are no opportunities to get attached to them.