Orhan Pamuk

Novelist Orhan Pamuk (born 1952), who lives in his native city of Istanbul, is the most significant present-day Turkish writer. As it said in the explanations of the jury when he was awarded the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels, he is a trail reader who follows the historical traces of the West in the East and of the East in the West. Five of Pamuk’s seven novels so far have been translated into German: The white fortress, The black book, The new life, Red is my name, Snow. They deal with the tension and often only thinly veiled differences between National Socialism, laicism and islamism in present-day Turkey. As a critic put it, his books emanate “the inner feeling of unease in modern Turkey.”

Pamuk has witnessed Istanbul’s conversion into a “mega-city” and described the transformation in Istanbul. Memories of a City. Pamuk explores the changes but also the cultural variety of his country, trying to grasp what treasures the Ottoman Empire abandoned when it became a modern national state. Pamuk also gives a voice to the contradictory relations of his home country with Europe, with its own history – reaping hostility and animosity. His credo: “It is the task of a writer to transform what is visible on the surface by employing the power of literature as well as all of his own creative power.”

Orhan Pamuk was awarded the IMPAC prize for literature in 2003 for Red is my name, and the Ricarda-Huch Prize and the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels in 2005.