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
writing house freedom-of-speech
When another writer in another house is not free, no writer is free.
istanbul firsts celebrate
It was in Cihangir that i first learned Istanbul was not an anonymous multitude of walled-in lives - a jungle of apartments where no one knew who was dead or who was celebrating what - but an archipelago of neighbourhoods in which everyone knew each other.
life-is-short life-is moments
Life is short, and we should respect every moment of it.
thinking cities istanbul
I think perhaps it is a generational thing. I talk to younger people and they say, Where is this melancholy city you talk about My Istanbul is a sunny place.
snow joy essentials
The snow reminded me of the beauty and mystery of creation, of the essential joy that is life.
art lying eye
Novels are political not because writers carry party cards -- some do, I do not -- but because good fiction is about identifying with and understanding people who are not necessarily like us. By nature all good novels are political because identifying with the other is political. At the heart of the 'art of the novel' lies the human capacity to see the world through others' eyes. Compassion is the greatest strength of the novelist.
laughing together laughing-together
Happiness is laughing together...
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.
country people way
Actually, it's the other way round. In a poor country, the only consolation people can have is the one that comes from their beliefs.
memories book writing
I'm a relatively disciplined writer who composes the whole book before beginning to execute and write it. Of course, you can't hold - you cannot imagine a whole novel before you write it; there are limits to human memory and imagination. Lots of things come to your mind as you write a book, but again, I make a plan, chapter, know the plot.
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.
country eye media
Of course in Turkey I'm seen as being on the 'Western' side, criticised by the nationalists, criticised by the communitarians as not belonging. Even, sometimes, criticised for looking at my country through Western eyes. And in the Western media I'm portrayed as belonging to the East.
evil want way
I really don't want to portray the Islamists as simply evil, the way it's often done in the west.