In Silent House, Orhan Pamuk, gives us a portrait of family whose complicated affairs mesh tragically with Turkey's history. Gathered in the house of Fatma (Grandmother), they come to enjoy a summer holiday by the sea.  Pamuk tells his story through five rotating first person narratives. We meet the family in the order of Pamuk's story:

Recep is the household retainer who cooks and keeps house for Grandmother. We learn that he is the illegitimate offspring of Grandmother's long dead husband.

Grandmother is the widow of Dr. Selahattin whose life work was an unfinished encyclopedia  extolling the virtues of western rationalism. Fatma is mortified by his atheism, his drinking and his second family, housed in a garden shed. She retreats to her bed.  Her summer visitors are her dead son's three children.

Hasan is Recep's nephew and is involved with an intimidating nationalist gang.

Faruk, the oldest of Fatma's grandchildren, is a professor of history who spends much of his holiday reading Ottoman documents in the local archives. 

Metin is the youngest of the grandchildren. A tearaway who spends his time showing off at the beach, careering about in fast cars and drinking too much at parties.

There is no first person narrative for Nilgun, the granddaughter, rather we piece together her story through the role she plays in the intersecting lives of the other characters.  By the end of this novel this bright young woman will be dead.

Pamuk has written a compelling family saga. The changing voices of each of the narrators are distinct and their concerns anchored in Turkey's contemporary cultural and political life. I strongly recommend this newly published translation.