Orhan Pamuk

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Ferit Orhan Pamuk

Born June 7, 1952 (1952-06-07) (age 56)
Istanbul, Turkey
Occupation Novelist
Nationality Turkish
Writing period 1974–present
Literary movement Postmodern literature
Notable work(s) Karanlık ve Işık (Dark and Light; debut)

The White Castle
The Black Book
The New Life
My Name is Red
Snow
Istanbul: Memories and the City
Notable award(s) Nobel Prize in Literature
2006
Influences
Official website

Ferit Orhan Pamuk (born on June 7, 1952 in Istanbul) generally known simply as Orhan Pamuk, is a Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist and professor of comparative literature at Columbia University.[1] Pamuk is one of Turkey's most prominent novelists,[2] and his work has been translated into more than fifty languages. He is the recipient of numerous national and international literary awards. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on October 12, 2006,[3] becoming the first Turkish person to receive a Nobel Prize.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Pamuk was born in Istanbul in 1952 and grew up in a wealthy yet declining bourgeois family, an experience he describes in passing in his novels The Black Book and Cevdet Bey and His Sons, as well as more thoroughly in his personal memoir Istanbul. He was educated at Robert College prep school in Istanbul and went on to study architecture at the Istanbul Technical University. He left the architecture school after three years, however, to become a full-time writer, and graduated from the Institute of Journalism at the University of Istanbul in 1976. From ages 22 to 30, Pamuk lived with his mother, writing his first novel and attempting to find a publisher.

On March 1, 1982, Pamuk married Aylin Turegen, a historian.[4] From 1985 to 1988, while his wife was a graduate student at Columbia University, Pamuk assumed the position of visiting scholar there, using the time to conduct research and write his novel The Black Book in the university's Butler Library. This period also included a visiting fellowship at the University of Iowa.

Pamuk returned to Istanbul. He and his wife had a daughter named Rüya born in 1991, whose name means "dream" in Turkish. In 2001, he and Aylin were divorced.

In 2006, after a period in which criminal charges had been pressed against him for his outspoken comments on the Armenian Genocide, Pamuk returned to the US to take up a position as a visiting professor at Columbia. Pamuk is currently a Fellow with Columbia's Committee on Global Thought and holds an appointment in Columbia's Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department and at its School of the Arts.

In May 2007 Pamuk was among the jury members at the Cannes Film Festival headed by British director Stephen Frears. In the 2007-8 academic year Pamuk returned to Columbia once again to jointly teach comparative literature classes with Andreas Huyssen and David Damrosch.

Pamuk is also currently a writer in residence at Bard College. He is at work on his next novel, The Museum of Innocence.

His older brother Şevket Pamuk - who sometimes appears as a fictional character in Orhan Pamuk's work - is a professor of history, internationally recognized for his work in history of economics of the Ottoman Empire, working at Bogazici University in Istanbul.

[edit] Work

Turkish Literature
By category
Epic Tradition

Orhon
Dede Korkut - Köroğlu
Folk Tradition

Folk literature
Folklore
Ottoman Era

Poetry | Prose
Republican Era

Poetry | Prose

Orhan Pamuk started writing regularly in 1974.[5] His first novel, Karanlık ve Işık (Darkness and Light) was a co-winner of the 1979 Milliyet Press Novel Contest (Mehmet Eroğlu (* tr) was the other winner). This novel was published with the title Cevdet Bey ve Oğulları (Mr. Cevdet and His Sons) in 1982, and won the Orhan Kemal Novel Prize in 1983. It tells the story of three generations of a wealthy Istanbul family living in Nişantaşı, the district of Istanbul where Pamuk grew up.

Pamuk won a number of critical prizes for his early work, including the 1984 Madarali Novel Prize for his second novel Sessiz Ev (The Silent House) and the 1991 Prix de la Découverte Européenne for the French translation of this novel. His historical novel Beyaz Kale (The White Castle), published in Turkish in 1985, won the 1990 Independent Award for Foreign Fiction and extended his reputation abroad. The New York Times Book Review stated, "A new star has risen in the east--Orhan Pamuk." He started experimenting with postmodern techniques in his novels, a change from the strict naturalism of his early works.

Popular success took a bit longer to come to Pamuk, but his 1990 novel Kara Kitap (The Black Book) became one of the most controversial and popular readings in Turkish literature, due to its complexity and richness. In 1992, he wrote the screenplay for the movie Gizli Yüz (Secret Face), based on Kara Kitap and directed by a prominent Turkish director, Ömer Kavur. Pamuk's fourth novel Yeni Hayat (New Life), caused a sensation in Turkey upon its 1995 publication and became the fastest-selling book in Turkish history. By this time, Pamuk had also become a high-profile figure in Turkey, due to his support for Kurdish political rights. In 1995, Pamuk was among a group of authors tried for writing essays that criticized Turkey's treatment of the Kurds. In 1999, Pamuk published his story book Öteki Renkler (The Other Colors).

Pamuk's international reputation continued to increase when he published Benim Adım Kırmızı (My Name is Red) in 2000. The novel blends mystery, romance, and philosophical puzzles in a setting of 16th century Istanbul. It opens a window into the reign of Ottoman Sultan Murat III in nine snowy winter days of 1591, inviting the reader to experience the tension between East and West from a breathlessly urgent perspective. My Name Is Red has been translated into 24 languages and won international literature's most lucrative prize (excluding the Nobel, which he later received), the IMPAC Dublin Award in 2003.

Asked the question “What impact did winning the IMPAC award (currently $127,000) have on your life and your work?“, Pamuk replied “Nothing changed in my life since I work all the time. I've spent 30 years writing fiction. For the first 10 years, I worried about money and no one asked how much money I made. The second decade I spent money and no one was asking 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.”

Pamuk's most recent novel is Kar in 2002 (English translation, Snow, 2004), which explores the conflict between Islamism and Westernism in modern Turkey. The New York Times listed Snow as one of its Ten Best Books of 2004. He also published a memoir/travelogue İstanbul—Hatıralar ve Şehir in 2003 (English version, Istanbul—Memories and the City, 2005). Pamuk's 'Other Colours' - a collection of non-fiction and a story - was published in the UK in September 2007. His next novel is titled 'The Museum of Innocence'.

Asked how personal his book Istanbul: Memories and the City was, Pamuk replied “I thought I would write Memories and the City in six months, but it took me one year to complete. And I was working twelve hours a day, just reading and working. My life, because of so many things, was in a crisis; I don’t want to go into those details: divorce, father dying, professional problems, problems with this, problems with that, everything was bad. I thought if I were to be weak I would have a depression. But every day I would wake up and have a cold shower and sit down and remember and write, always paying attention to the beauty of the book. Honestly, I may have hurt my mother, my family. My father was dead, but my mother is still alive. But I can’t care about that; I must care about the beauty of the book.”[6]

In 2005 Orhan Pamuk received the €25,000 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for his literary work, in which "Europe and Islamic Turkey find a place for one another." The award presentation was held at Paul's Church, Frankfurt.

Pamuk's books are characterized by a confusion or loss of identity brought on in part by the conflict between European and Islamic, or more generally Western and Eastern values. They are often disturbing or unsettling, but include complex, intriguing plots and characters of great depth. His works are also redolent with discussion of and fascination with the creative arts, such as literature and painting. Pamuk's work often touches on the deep-rooted tensions between East and West and tradition and modernism/secularism.

Pamuk while writing.
Pamuk while writing.

[edit] Nobel Prize

On October 12, 2006, the Swedish Academy announced that Orhan Pamuk had been awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in literature for Istanbul, confounding pundits and oddsmakers who had made Syrian poet Ali Ahmad Said, known as Adunis, a favorite.[7] In its citation, the Academy said: "In the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city, [Pamuk] has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures."[3] Orhan Pamuk held his Nobel Lecture December 7, 2006, at the Swedish Academy, Stockholm. The lecture was entitled "Babamın Bavulu" (My Father's Suitcase)[8] and was given in Turkish. In the lecture he viewed the relations between Eastern and Western Civilizations in an allegorical upper text which covers his relationship with his father.

What literature needs most to tell and investigate today are humanity's basic fears: the fear of being left outside, and the fear of counting for nothing, and the feelings of worthlessness that come with such fears; the collective humiliations, vulnerabilities, slights, grievances, sensitivities, and imagined insults, and the nationalist boasts and inflations that are their next of kind ... Whenever I am confronted by such sentiments, and by the irrational, overstated language in which they are usually expressed, I know they touch on a darkness inside me. We have often witnessed peoples, societies and nations outside the Western world–and I can identify with them easily–succumbing to fears that sometimes lead them to commit stupidities, all because of their fears of humiliation and their sensitivities. I also know that in the West–a world with which I can identify with the same ease–nations and peoples taking an excessive pride in their wealth, and in their having brought us the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and Modernism, have, from time to time, succumbed to a self-satisfaction that is almost as stupid.

Orhan Pamuk's Nobel Lecture (translation by Maureen Freely)

[edit] Criminal case

In 2005, after Pamuk made a statement regarding the mass killings of Armenians and Kurds in the Ottoman Empire, a criminal case was opened against the author based on a complaint filed by ultra-nationalist lawyer Kemal Kerinçsiz.[9] The charges were dropped on 22 January 2006. Pamuk has subsequently stated his intent was to draw attention to freedom of expression issues.

[edit] Pamuk's statements

The criminal charges against Pamuk resulted from remarks he made during an interview in February 2005 with the Swiss publication Das Magazin, a weekly supplement to a number of Swiss daily newspapers: the Tages-Anzeiger, the Basler Zeitung, the Berner Zeitung and the Solothurner Tagblatt. In the interview, Pamuk stated, "Thirty thousand Kurds, and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody dares to talk about it."

Pamuk has said that after the Swiss interview was published, he was subjected to a hate campaign that forced him to flee the country.[10] He returned later in 2005, however, to face the charges against him. In an interview with CNN TURK, he said that in his speech he used passive voice, and he did not give numbers like 30000 or 1000000. In an interview with BBC News, he said that he wanted to defend freedom of speech, which was Turkey's only hope for coming to terms with its history: "What happened to the Ottoman Armenians in 1915 was a major thing that was hidden from the Turkish nation; it was a taboo. But we have to be able to talk about the past."[11]

[edit] Prosecution

In June 2005, Turkey introduced a new penal code including Article 301, which states: "A person who, being a Turk, explicitly insults the Republic or Turkish Grand National Assembly, shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months to three years." Pamuk was retroactively charged with violating this law in the interview he had given four months earlier. In October, after the prosecution had begun, Pamuk reiterated his views in a speech given during an award ceremony in Germany: "I repeat, I said loud and clear that one million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in Turkey."[12]

Because Pamuk was charged under an ex post facto law, Turkish law required that his prosecution be approved by the Ministry of Justice. A few minutes after Pamuk's trial started on 16 December, the judge found that this approval had not yet been received and suspended the proceedings. In an interview published in the Akşam newspaper the same day, Justice Minister Cemil Çiçek said he had not yet received Pamuk's file but would study it thoroughly once it came.[13]

On December 29, 2005, Turkish state prosecutors dropped the charge that Pamuk insulted Turkey's armed forces, although the charge of "insulting Turkishness" remained.[14]

[edit] International reaction

The charges against Pamuk caused an international outcry and led to questions in some circles about Turkey's proposed entry into the European Union. On 30 November, the European Parliament announced that it would send a delegation of five MEPs, led by Camiel Eurlings, to observe the trial.[15] EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn subsequently stated that the Pamuk case would be a "litmus test" of Turkey's commitment to the EU's membership criteria.

On 1 December, Amnesty International released a statement calling for Article 301 to be repealed and for Pamuk and six other people awaiting trial under the act to be freed.[16] PEN American Center also denounced the charges against Pamuk, stating: "PEN finds it extraordinary that a state that has ratified both the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the European Convention on Human Rights, both of which see freedom of expression as central, should have a Penal Code that includes a clause that is so clearly contrary to these very same principles."[17]

On 13 December, eight world-renowned authors—José Saramago, Gabriel García Márquez, Günter Grass, Umberto Eco, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Goytisolo, John Updike and Mario Vargas Llosa—issued a joint statement supporting Pamuk and decrying the charges against him as a violation of human rights.[18]

[edit] Western reviewers

In a review of Snow in The Atlantic, Christopher Hitchens complained that "from reading Snow one might easily conclude that all the Armenians of Anatolia had decided for some reason to pick up and depart en masse, leaving their ancestral properties for tourists to gawk at."[19]

However, John Updike, reviewing the same book in The New Yorker, wrote: "To produce a major work so frankly troubled and provocatively bemused and, against the grain of the author’s usual antiquarian bent, entirely contemporary in its setting and subjects, took the courage that art sometimes visits upon even its most detached practitioners."[20]

[edit] Charges dropped

On January 22, 2006, the Justice Ministry refused to issue an approval of the prosecution, saying that they had no authority to open a case against Pamuk under the new penal code.[21] With the trial in the local court, it was ruled the next day that the case could not continue without Justice Ministry approval.[22] Pamuk's lawyer, Haluk İnanıcı, subsequently confirmed that charges had been dropped.

The announcement occurred in a week when the EU was scheduled to begin a review of the Turkish justice system.[23]

[edit] Aftermath

EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn welcomed the dropping of charges, saying 'This is obviously good news for Mr. Pamuk, but it's also good news for freedom of expression in Turkey.' However, some EU representatives expressed disappointment that the justice ministry had rejected the prosecution on a technicality rather than on principle. Reuters quoted an unnamed diplomat as saying, "It is good the case has apparently been dropped, but the justice ministry never took a clear position or gave any sign of trying to defend Pamuk."[24]

Meanwhile, the lawyer who had led the effort to try Pamuk, Kemal Kerinçsiz, said he would appeal the decision, saying, "Orhan Pamuk must be punished for insulting Turkey and Turkishness, it is a grave crime and it should not be left unpunished."[25]

On April 25, 2006, (in print in the May 8, 2006 issue) the magazine Time listed Orhan Pamuk in the cover article "TIME 100: The People Who Shape Our World", in the category "Heroes & Pioneers", for speaking up.[26]

In April 2006, on the BBC's Hardtalk program, Pamuk stated that his remarks regarding the Armenian massacres were meant to draw attention to freedom of expression issues in Turkey rather than to the massacres themselves.[27]

On December 19-20, 2006 a symposium on Orhan Pamuk and His Work was held at Sabanci University, Istanbul. Pamuk himself gave the closing address.

In January 2008, 13 ultranationalists, including Kemal Kerinçsiz, were arrested by Turkish authorities for participating in a Turkish nationalist underground organisation, named Ergenekon, allegedly conspiring to assassinate political figures, including several Christian missionaries and Armenian intellectual Hrant Dink.[28] Several reports suggest that Orhan Pamuk was among the figures this group plotted to kill.[29][30]

[edit] Bibliography in English

  • The White Castle, translated by Victoria Holbrook, Manchester (UK): Carcanet Press Limited, 1990;, 1991; New York: George Braziller, 1991 [original title: Beyaz Kale]
  • The Black Book, translated by Güneli Gün, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994 [original title: Kara Kitap]. A new translation by Maureen Freely was published in 2006
  • The New Life, translated by Güneli Gün, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997 [original title: Yeni Hayat]
  • My Name is Red, translated by Erdağ M. Göknar, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001 [original title: Benim Adım Kırmızı].
  • Snow, translated by Maureen Freely, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004 [original title: Kar]
  • Istanbul: Memories of a City‎, translated by Maureen Freely, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005 [original title: İstanbul: Hatıralar ve Şehir]
  • Other Colors: Essays and a Story, translated by Maureen Freely, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007 [original title: Öteki Renkler]

[edit] Bibliography in Turkish

  • Cevdet Bey ve Oğulları (Cevdet Bey and His Sons), novel, Istanbul: Karacan Yayınları, 1982
  • Sessiz Ev (The Silent House) , novel, Istanbul: Can Yayınları, 1983
  • Beyaz Kale (The White Castle), novel, Istanbul: Can Yayınları, 1985
  • Kara Kitap (The Black Book), novel, Istanbul: Can Yayınları, 1990
  • Gizli Yüz (Secret Face), screenplay, Istanbul: Can Yayınları, 1992 [2]
  • Yeni Hayat (The New Life), novel, Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1995
  • Benim Adım Kırmızı (My Name is Red), novel, Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1998
  • Öteki Renkler (Other Colors), essays, Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1999
  • Kar (Snow), novel, Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2002
  • İstanbul: Hatıralar ve Şehir (Istanbul: Memories and the City), memoirs, Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2003
  • Babamın Bavulu (My Father's Suitcase), three speeches, Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2007

[edit] Awards

[edit] Doctorates, honoris causa

[edit] References

  1. ^ Turkey's Pamuk wins Nobel literature prize
  2. ^ ARTS ABROAD; A Novelist Sees Dishonor in an Honor From the State, New York Times
  3. ^ a b The Nobel Prize in Literature 2006. Retrieved on 2006-10-12.
  4. ^ "Pegasos", Finnish literary website
  5. ^ Encyclopedia of Modern Asia - Page 458 by David Levinson, Karen Christensen
  6. ^ Stocke, Joy E.; "The Melancholy Life of Orhan Pamuk", Wild River Review, November 19, 2007.
  7. ^ Syrian Poet Favored To Win Prize, New York Times, October 12, 2006
  8. ^ Nobel Lecture
  9. ^ "Kerinçsiz puts patriotism before free speech, EU". Turkish Daily News, July 21, 2006.
  10. ^ Author's trial set to test Turkey, BBC News.
  11. ^ Author's trial set to test Turkey, BBC News.
  12. ^ Writer repeats Turk deaths claim, BBC News.
  13. ^ Turk writer's insult trial halted, BBC News.
  14. ^ Partial reprieve for Turk writer, BBC News.
  15. ^ Camiel Eurlings MEP leads delegation to observe trial of Orhan Pamuk, EEP-ED.
  16. ^ Amnesty International, Article 301
  17. ^ PEN Protests Charges Against Turkish Author Orhan Pamuk, PEN American Center
  18. ^ Literary world backs Pamuk, NTV
  19. ^ Mind the Gap, Christopher Hitchens, The Atlantic Monthly
  20. ^ John Updike, "Anatolian Arabesques: A modernist novel of contemporary Turkey," The New Yorker, August 30, 2004.
  21. ^ Pamuk Case Dropped as Minister Says 'I have no Authorization for Permission' The ministry left the decision of whether to proceed , Zaman.
  22. ^ Turkish court drops charges against novelist, The Independent
  23. ^ Turkey drops charges against author, Scotsman.com News
  24. ^ Reuters
  25. ^ Canadian Press
  26. ^ Orhan Pamuk:Teller of the Awful Truth, Time.
  27. ^ Hardtalk in Turkey: Orhan Pamuk, BBC.
  28. ^ Tavernise, Sabrina. 13 Arrested in Push to Stifle Turkish Ultranationalists Suspected in Political Killings. The New York Times. January 28, 2008.
  29. ^ Plot to kill Orhan Pamuk foiled. The Times of India. 25 Jan 2008
  30. ^ Lea, Richard. 'Plot to kill' Nobel laureate. The Guardian. January 28, 2008.
  31. ^ 2006 Nobel Prize-winner Orhan Pamuk to receive Washington University's inaugural Distinguished Humanist Medal Nov. 27
  32. ^ Turkish Author Receives Honorary Degree from Georgetown's "University News On-line
  33. ^ Freie Universität Berlin Pressemitteilung (German)
  34. ^ [1]


[edit] External links

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Persondata
NAME Pamuk, Orhan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pamuk, Ferit Orhan
SHORT DESCRIPTION Turkish novelist
DATE OF BIRTH June 7, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Istanbul Turkey
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
Awards
Preceded by
Süheyla Acar Kalyoncu		 Golden Orange Award
for Best Screenplay
1991
for Gizli Yüz		 Succeeded by
Macit Koper
v • d • e
Works by Orhan Pamuk
Novels:

Cevdet Bey and His Sons (1982) • The Silent House (1983) • The White Castle (1985) • The Black Book (1990) • The New Life (1995) • My Name is Red (1998) • Snow (2002) • The Museum of Innocence (forthcoming)
Screenplay:

The Secret Face (1992)
Non-fiction:

Other Colors: Essays and a Story (1999) • Istanbul: Memories of a City‎ (2003) • My Father's Suitcase (2007)
v • d • e
Golden Orange Award for Best Screenplay
Vedat Türkali (1965) · Erol Keskin-Haldun Dormen (1966) · Erol Günaydın-Erol Keskin (1967) · Türkan Duru (1968) · Türkan Duru (1969) · Sadık Şendil (1970) · Bülent Oran (1971) · Sadık Şendil (1972) · Hamdi Değirmencioğlu (1973) · Sadık Şendil (1974) · Yılmaz Güney (1975) · Umur Bugay (1976) · Vedat Türkali (1977) · Umur Bugay (1978) · Tuncel Kurtiz-Nurettin Sezer (1981) · Yavuz Turgul (1982) · Fehmi Yaşar (1983) · Bilge Olgaç (1984) · Muammer Özer (1985) · Yavuz Turgul (1986) · Yavuz Turgul (1987) · Feride Çiçekoğlu (1989) · Süheyla Acar Kalyoncu (1990) · Orhan Pamuk (1991) · Macit Koper (1992) · Yavuz Turgul (1993) · Nuray Oğuz (1994) · Aykut Tankuter-Artun Yeres (1995) · Derviş Zaim (1996) · Barış Pirhasan (1997) · Turgut Yasalar (1998) · Zeki Demirkubuz (1999) · Fatih Altınöz (2000) · Handan İpekçi (2001) · Nuri Bilge Ceylan (2002) · Ömer Kavur-Macit Koper (2003) · Uğur Yücel (2004) · Nilüfer Güngörmüş-Reha Erdem (2005) · Önder Çakar (2006) · Semih Kaplanoğlu-Orçun Köksal (2007)
v • d • e
Nobel Laureates in Literature

V. S. Naipaul (2001) · Imre Kertész (2002) · John Maxwell Coetzee (2003) · Elfriede Jelinek (2004) · Harold Pinter (2005) · Orhan Pamuk (2006) · Doris Lessing (2007)
Complete roster · 1901–1925 · 1926–1950 · 1951–1975 · 1976–2000 · 2001–present