Orhan Pamuk - Literature 2006

Orhan Pamuk is a novelist who comes from Turkey and got the Novel Prize award in 2006.

His work begins at realistic novel tradition and changes into storytelling with postmodernist strategies.

He was born and spent majority of his life in Istanbul which had an influence on Pamuk’s personality and his writing, such as double identity of the town.

Same as his father and grandfather, he studied architecture at Istanbul University of Technology, but he didnt finish it. However in 1977 he received a degrese in journalism at the University of Istanbul.

Pamuk’s first novel- family saga called Cevdet Bey ve Ogullari from 1982 was awarded in 1983 with Orhan Kemal Novel Prize.

His second novel called Seissiv ev from 1983 which is telling story from a five different points of view, won the Madarali Novel Prize.

His realist tradition was broken in historical novel called The White Castle from 1985.

Pamuk got married to historian Aylin Turegen in 1982 and they divorced in 2001.

Pamuk was Arthur Miller’s and Herold Pinter’s guide at their Turkey visit in 1985 arranged by PEN in conjunction with the Helsinki Watch Committee.

He visited his fellow at the University of Iowa’s International Writing in 1982.

The first half of Kara kitap (from The Black Book postmodern novel from 1990) was written during his stay at Columbia University. His vision of modern-day Istanbul is similar to Dublin from James Joyce or Günter Grass Danzig. Pamuk is telling mysterious story, he is playing with identities, complex narratives, Sufi mysticism paradoxes and fiction. This book was made into a movie, director was Ömer Kaur.

The storyteller in Yeni Hayat (1995, A New Life) is a young man, whose life is change by a book. The story is a poetic with a fiction power, obsession and false reality concept about mans long bus ride ending by approaching a truck he has been searching for.

Pamuk was very successful in Turkey with murder mystery novel set in 16th century Istanbul called My Name Is Red (1998). There had been 85,000 copies sold in three weeks.

Story jumps from one chapter to another, murdered man violates Islam teaching by creating representational, figurative art.

The political novel Kar (2002, Snow) is telling a story about political refugee and poet named Ka, who has spent 12 years in Germany. He is investigating a wave of young girls suicides in a small Anatolian town of Kars, meets his teenager sweetheart and recover his poetic voice before he gets killed. Snow as awarded with the prestigious Medicis Prize in 2005.

Pamuk was very popular writer in his own country and supposed to get the state artist title but he didnt accept it as he was accused of pleasing Western audiences.

In 2005 Pamuk received the German Book Trade’s Peace Prize. In the same year he was charged with insult of the Turkis Republic and his books were burned at a nationalist demonstration. They dropped the charges in 2006.