The postsecular imaginaries of Orhan Pamuk’s novels

AbstractThis article argues that Orhan Pamuk’s literary innovations bring formations of religion and secularism separated by ideologies of Turkish modernization and cultural revolution into productive parity. Pamuk’s depictions of the Ottoman Islamic past and its legacies—including its material culture, everyday practices, and Sufism—articulate mystical and religious tropes along with the material and secular culture of the nation-state. His eleven novels published between 1982 and 2022 dramatiz