Turkish Novelist at the Crux of Clashing and Mingling Cultures Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

By JENNIFER HOWARD

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The 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to the Istanbul-born novelist Orhan Pamuk, "who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures," the Nobel Foundation announced this morning.

Born in 1952 into a well-heeled family of engineers, Mr. Pamuk has written 10 books, including the novels Beyaz Kale (1985; translated into English as The White Castle in 1991); Benim Adim Kirmizi (1998; My Name Is Red, 2001), and Kar (2002; Snow, 2004), which "becomes a tale of love and poetic creativity just as it knowledgeably describes the political and religious conflicts that characterize Turkish society of our day," the Nobel Foundation said.

"In his home country," the foundation wrote in a statement announcing the award, "Pamuk has a reputation as a social commentator even though he sees himself as principally a fiction writer with no political agenda. He was the first author in the Muslim world to publicly condemn the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. He took a stand for his Turkish colleague Yasar Kemal when Kemal was put on trial, in 1995."

In 2005, in a case that attracted widespread international attention, Mr. Pamuk faced prosecution by the Turkish government "after having mentioned, in a Swiss newspaper, that 30,000 Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in Turkey," the foundation noted. Those charges were subsequently dropped. Another Turkish novelist, Elif Shafak, faced similar charges last month; that case was also dismissed (The Chronicle, September 22).

Mr. Pamuk's work has been handsomely recognized over the years both in his home country and abroad. His early novels won several Turkish and foreign literary prizes; more recent accolades include France's 2002 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger for My Name Is Red, the 2003 International Impac Dublin Literary Award, and the 2006 Prix Méditerranée Étranger for Snow. Mr. Pamuk has also written a nonfiction meditation on his hometown, Istanbul: Hatiralar Ve Sehir (2003; Istanbul: Memories and the City, 2005), which anatomizes "the melancholy he sees as distinctive for Istanbul and its inhabitants."

A graduate of Istanbul's Robert College, Mr. Pamuk early on harbored dreams of becoming an artist or architect. He studied architecture at Istanbul Technical University and journalism at Istanbul University. From 1985 to 1988, he was a visiting researcher at Columbia University, and was briefly at the University of Iowa. He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The Nobel Prize, which carries a value of approximately $1.4-million, will be presented in a ceremony in Stockholm on December 10.

More information about the prize winner is available on the Nobel Web site.

Other news of the 2006 Nobel Prizes:

• Economist Wins Nobel Prize for Describing Key Roles of Long-Term Expectations by Employers and Workers (10/9/2006)

• Freeze-Frame Photos of Key Process in Cell DNA Win Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Stanford Researcher (10/4/2006)

• Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to 2 American Cosmologists for Findings on Universe's Infancy (10/3/2006)

• Nobel Prize Goes to 2 Americans for Discovery of Key Control of Cell's Genetic Workings (10/2/2006)