Pamuk’s Nobel
Margaret Atwood on Orhan Pamuk:
Pamuk gives us what all novelists give us at their best: the truth. Not the truth of statistics, but the truth of human experience at a particular place, in a particular time. And as with all great literature, you feel at moments not that you are examining him, but that he is examining you.And here is Pamuk’s translator Maureen Freely:
Last year - not long after Orhan Pamuk was tried for insulting Turkishness - an Istanbul newspaper ran an article entitled ‘Who is Maureen Freely?’ Their answer was that I was more than just Orhan’s friend and translator - I was a shadowy master agent whose sole purpose in life was to win my client a Nobel Prize…And Elif Sharak:
Novelists are the “babas”, the fathers of their readers. They are loved and hated, looked up to and looked down upon. This is a society which is writer-oriented, not writing-oriented.Orhan Pamuk has been working against this background for years. He writes with great passion and determination, all the while endorsing, publicising and internationalising the Turkish novel. As conspicuous as his books have been, he himself has always remained almost unreachable. If he has been any kind of “baba” to his readers he has only been a detached father more inspired by his own imagination than by his nation. Perhaps it is this that triggers some sons, some segments of Turkish society, to attack him…
I love Margaret Atwood.
I love Orhan Pamuk.
One of a kind writers!
Comment by Kishore — October 21, 2006 @ 3:34 pm
Orhan Pamuk is a brave writer who has not left his city/country in spite of being subject to severe hostility. His ‘Istanbul’ is a master autobiography of the city and the author. This is so because the author identifies so closely with the city in spite of being brought up amongst the minority westernised elite of Turkey. The identification is unique because the melancholic strain in the book is at times that of the author and at times that of Istanbul and at times of both. It is a must read and a good read.
Comment by shoummo from kolkata — October 26, 2006 @ 4:22 am