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
american-novelist book conception experience god
The hero of the book does long to experience God. But his conception of God is very western.
Language is me, in a way. Really, I feel it.
I write a world where everyone is partly right.
people politics
I think less than people think I do about politics. I care about writing.
age convey less life understanding
At the age of 60, I am less experimental and more mature. I want most of all to convey my understanding of life.
again diplomat nature people sort
People look at me as sort of a diplomat for Turkey, which by nature, I'm not; I don't want to be. It's again about that playfulness. Being Turkey's voice or representative is not playful, it's not childlike; it makes me self-conscious, kills the child in me.
accurately authority gives identify imitate novels people singular
Novels are political because in them, we try to identify with people who are not like us. And, in that sense, I like the first-person singular because I have to imitate accurately the voice of someone who is not like me. The third-person singular gives me an authority over a character.
convincing details earlier fantasies life man reality
Idealism, unrealistic idealism, is always contrasted with the reality of the people, of the man in the street. The details of daily life are always more convincing than the political fantasies of the earlier generations.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
novelists work
I think novelists should be disciplined and self-imposed working hours. I work a lot, but I don't feel that I'm working. I always feel that there is a child in me, healthy, and I'm playing.