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
bring claim country doubt eu european laws membership possibly public questions raise wisdom
There is no doubt that it will raise questions about the wisdom of Turkey's EU membership bid. How can it possibly claim to be a European country if it has such laws on the books, and if public prosecutors can bring such cases?
armenians dares lands million nobody talk thirty thousand
Thirty thousand Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it,
armenians clear loud million stand
I repeat, I said loud and clear that 1 million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in Turkey, and I stand by that.
lived political reason turkey
I am a Turk. I've lived in Turkey for 43 years, and for that reason my political observations are about Turkey, because that's what I know.
perhaps
I think perhaps it is a generational thing,
attacks attitude avoid beginning blame clear draw eye incidents including lack line members problem tried wave weakness year
I blame him for his weakness and lack of determination. At the beginning of this year we had a wave of nationalist incidents and attacks on the E.U. project, including some by members of his own party. He did not look the problem in the eye and draw a clear line between anti-E.U. nationalism and the attitude of tolerance. He tried to avoid the subject.
case character competing course define europe france ideas itself joining needs past policy reason recommend reduced simple since solve term turkey ultimately various view vision
Of course I'm for Turkey joining the EU. But it's too simple to say that will make us all well-off and solve all our problems. Since the referendums in France and the Netherlands, Europe is preoccupied with itself. Various ideas are competing with one another about the character of the Union. Will Europe define itself exclusively through the past ? This is a conservative view and can ultimately be reduced to discussions on agricultural policy and the distribution of funds. This is always the case with short-term politics. But in the long term Europe needs an all-encompassing vision of itself and for that reason I recommend that Turkey joins.
crime
There is nothing that constitutes a crime in this interview.
captive either future hand happier lives name remember tells unhappy wrote
I wrote 'My Name is Red' just to remember painting, where the hand does it before the intellect. When I'm captive to it, I'm a happier person. Kierkegaard tells us that a happy person is someone who lives in the present; the unhappy person, someone who lives either in the past or the future.
bourgeois leaders museum name popular secular trying understand united
'Snow' is my most popular book in the United States. But in Turkey, it was not as popular as 'My Name is Red,' or even 'The Museum of Innocence,' because the secular leaders didn't want this bourgeois Orhan trying to understand these head-scarf girls.
books huge islamic modern work
The fictive structure, my work, my imagination, my books are about the details, the huge construction about culture, Islamic culture or modern Turkey. They're all intertwined.
close istanbul power respect rural whether
I don't much care whether rural Anatolians or Istanbul secularists take power. I'm not close to any of them. What I care about is respect for the individual.
focusing novels telling western
I had the feeling that focusing on objects and telling a story through them would make my protagonists different from those in Western novels - more real, more quintessentially of Istanbul.
american-novelist book conception experience god
The hero of the book does long to experience God. But his conception of God is very western.