Maybe he's not acknowledged as the national novelist of Turkey because of his frequent clashes with the Erdogan regime but he is certainly the most read, not just in Turkey, but also across the world.

This latest offering from the master of Turkish novelists is essentially the voyage of discovery and personal growth of its protagonist, Cem.

Born in a family with the father frequently in jail because of his political opinion, Cem becomes an assistant to Master Mahmut, a well-digger, rather than enrol at a university.

This was the time when Istanbul was smaller than it is today and surrounded by fields and open spaces. The space chosen to dig a well was in one of these open spaces. Today, as we see in the last part of the book, this area is all built up.

In Master Mahmut Cem finds a second father explaining to him the wisdom preserved in old classical legends.

But Cem is also attracted by the nearby small town and in particular by a red-haired woman, part of an itinerant drama troupe.

Then comes the climax, or rather the first climax of many. As a result Cem runs away and leaves the Master alive or dead at the bottom of the profound well.

Years pass. Cem goes to university, graduates and becomes quite rich. One day he is invited to visit the area he knows best, where he had dug the well. At the presentation he meets, after so many years, the red-haired woman. And he is also informed that a certain person, who he doesn't know, wants to meet him.

The Red-Haired Woman is not just the story of Cem but also the story of his society's moral slide - justifying horrors by trying to escape what you have left undone or by smothering the truths you want to forget.

The author is also quietly political. There is criticism of the "motorised rich" who carve more roads in the countryside regardless of the traditional communities they are splitting open in the process. Whereas in other times young men used to fashion their lives around leftwing politics, they have now switched to religious poetry and myths - Oedipus's parricide and Rustam's filicide from the medieval Persian epic Shahmaneh.