A PAMUK PRIMER
by Stephanie Yap
The Straits Times (Singapore)
October 15, 2006 Sunday
Despite Turkey’s hostile attitude towards Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk,
the land of his birth is where his heart belongs
THE name Orhan Pamuk might not ring a bell for most people, but the
54-year-old Turkish writer, who was announced as the 2006 recipient
of the Nobel Prize in literature last Thursday, actually caused quite
an international hullabaloo last year.
In an interview with a Swiss newspaper in February that year, he made
the statement that ‘thirty thousand Kurds and one million Armenians
were killed in these lands, and nobody but me dares to talk about it’.
He was referring to the conflict between the Turkish Army and Kurdish
separatists in the 1980s and 1990s, and the mass killings of Armenians
in 1915. Turkey still does not acknowledge the Armenian slaughter
as genocide.
In December last year, Pamuk found himself standing trial for violating
Article 301 of Turkey’s penal code, which prohibits public denigration
of Turkish national identity, the republic or the national assembly.
However, the trial stalled as soon as it started, with the judge
postponing the proceedings for two months on a technicality. The case
was eventually dropped.
The media at the time speculated that Turkey backed down after
criticism by leaders of the European Union, which Turkey applied to
join in 1987, but has yet to be admitted to.
The writer is now a visiting professor at Columbia University in New
York. However, despite Turkey’s hostile attitude towards him, it is
clear that the land of his birth is where his heart still belongs.
He told the Associated Press in a telephone interview that he accepted
the award not just as ‘a personal honour, but as an honour bestowed
upon the Turkish literature and culture I represent’.
Here’s a look at the newest Nobel laureate, and a rundown of the
works that earned him the $2.2 million prize.
The writer
ORHAN Pamuk was born on June 7, 1952, in Istanbul, Turkey, to a
wealthy industrialist family. He is the younger of two sons. His
father, a businessman, died in 2003.
His older brother, Sevket, is a university professor and a noted
expert on economic history. He sometimes appears as a fictional
character in Pamuk’s books.
The writer attended the exclusive American-style Robert College in
Istanbul, graduating in 1970. He then entered Istanbul Technical
University at the age of 20 to study architecture, but left after
three years as he realised he wanted to be a writer.
He graduated from the Institute of Journalism at Istanbul University
in 1976 but never worked as a journalist.
Instead, he started writing at the age of 23 and published his first
novel, Cevdet Bey And His Sons, seven years later at the age of 30.
Winning both the Orhan Kemal and Milliyet literary prizes – two of
the most prestigious in Turkey – he went on to write six more novels,
the most recent being Snow in 2002.
He writes in Turkish, and all but his first two novels have been
translated into English.
He was a visiting scholar at Columbia from 1985 to 1988, a period
which also included a visiting fellowship at the University of Iowa.
He returned to Istanbul, where he lived until early this year, when
he went back to the United States to take up the position at Columbia.
He married historian Aylin Turegen in 1982, but they divorced in
2001. They have a teenage daughter.
The works
NOVEL #1: Cevdet Bey And His Sons (1982). It is about three generations
of a wealthy Istanbul family, and depicts Turkey changing from an
Eastern identity to a Western one.
NOVEL #2: The Silent House (1984). A novel in five voices, reminiscent
of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, it is about three siblings who spend
a summer in the 1970s at their dying grandmother’s home outside
Istanbul. Meanwhile, communists and nationalists clash in the city’s
streets.
NOVEL #3: The White Castle (1985), translated into English in 1990.
Set in the 17th century, on the eve of Ottoman decline, it is the story
of a Turkish scholar and a captured Venetian who argue with each other
about whose civilisation is superior. In the end, they swop identities.
NOVEL #4: The Black Book (1990), translated into English in 1994. In
a narrative heavily influenced by Jorge Luis Borges and James Joyce,
an Istanbul lawyer searches for his runaway wife who has fled with a
prominent newspaper columnist. After the couple die in an accident,
the lawyer assumes the identity of the journalist, wearing his clothes
and even writing his columns.
NOVEL #5: The New Life (1995), translated into English in 1997. A
young man falls in love with a girl and the book she is reading. They
then embark on a random tour of Turkey, observing a country that has
forgotten, or wants to forget, its history.
NOVEL #6: My Name Is Red (1998), translated into English in 2001. A
murder mystery set in the late 16th century, it is often seen as
Pamuk’s magnum opus. At the Sultan’s Court, the introduction of
Western Renaissance painting, characterised by realism, threatens
traditional Persian miniature painting, which is rooted in the idea
of Allah as the only creator.
NOVEL #7: Snow (2002), translated into English in 2004. A Turkish
poet who has been living abroad returns to his homeland. There, he
investigates a rumour about a remote village where some girls have
killed themselves rather than remove their headscarves, as Turkish
law requires.
MEMOIR: Istanbul: Memories And The City (2003), translated into
English in 2005. Pamuk’s memoir pays tribute to his hometown, showing
how the melancholy of the once-mighty city permeates the lives of
its inhabitants.
Most of the English translations are available or can be ordered
through major bookstores.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
