Orhan Pamuk
Orhan Pamuk
Ferit Orhan Pamukis a Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. One of Turkey's most prominent novelists, his work has sold over thirteen million books in sixty-three languages, making him the country's best-selling writer...
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 June 1952
CityIstanbul, Turkey
children eye light
She looked out the window; in her eyes was the light that you see only in children arriving at a new place, or in young people still open to new influences, still curious about the world because they have not yet been scarred by life.
beautiful father intelligent
Any intelligent person knows that life is a beautiful thing and that the purpose of life is to be happy," said my father as he watched the three beauties. "But it seems only idiots are ever happy. How can we explain this?
europe people being-free
In Europe the rich are refined enough to act as if they're not wealthy. That is how civilized people behave. If you ask me, being cultured and civilized is not about everyone being free and equal; it's about everyone being refined enough to act as if they were. Then no one has to feel guilty.
views voice political
The challenge is to lend conviction even to the voices which advocate views I find personally abhorrent, whether they are political Islamists or officers justifying a coup.
turkeys talking wells
There's been quite a clear upswing in nationalist sentiments. Everyone is talking about it, in Turkey as well.
evil want way
I really don't want to portray the Islamists as simply evil, the way it's often done in the west.
cities people want
I want to describe the psychological state of the people in a certain city.
giving-up hero want
My hero wants to belong too, but he doesn't want to give up all the things he came to value in the west.
europe hands west
Well, on the one hand the Turks have the legitimate need to defend their national dignity - and this includes being recognized as a part of the west and Europe.
way doe illustrating
Yet does illustrating in a new way signify a new way of seeing?
mistake believe army
The secularists in Turkey haven't underestimated religion, they just made the mistake of believing they could control it with the power of the army alone.
writing years fiction
Nothing changed in my life since I work all the time," Pamuk said then. "I've spent 30 years writing fiction. For the first 10 years I worried about money and no one asked me how much money I made. The second decade I spent money and no one was asking me about that. And I've spent the last 10 years with everyone expecting to hear how I spend the money, which I will not do.
eye years long
As soon as I observed myself from outside myself, I recognized and understood that I had a long-standing habit of keeping an eye on myself. That's how I managed to pull myself together, over the years, checking myself from the outside.
hero world detectives
How different from the cosy world of Rüya's detective novels, where authors never vexed a hero with more signs than he needed.