Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul in 1952. He studied architecture and journalism, but soon dedicated himself to literature. In 1978, at the age of just twenty-six, he published his first novel, "Cevdet Bey ve Ogullari" ("Cevdet Bey and Sons"), a substantial work of six hundred and twenty pages. Through the story of three generations of a family of Turkish merchants, the novel narrates the creation of the Turkish bourgeoisie and, indirectly, modern Turkey (from the Young Turks movement in 1908 to the military coup in 1971). This novel won the 1979 Milliyet Publishing House Novel Competition. It was published in 1982 and the following year received the Orhan Kemal Novel Award. It was followed by "Sessiz Ev" ("The Silent House") in 1983, "Beyaz Kale" ("The White Castle") in 1985, and "Kara Kitap" ("The Black Book") in 1990. In these works, the author portrays a society striving to find its identity, balancing on the geographical and cultural boundary between two worlds. The westernization of Turkish society with the establishment of the modern Turkish state and the rise of the Turkish bourgeoisie, the concept of individuality, and the theme of history are subjects that deeply concern the author. He has been honored with numerous literary awards in his country, and his books have been translated into more than 50 languages. In 2005, while facing challenges in his country due to his public remarks about the Armenian genocide, he was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade at the Frankfurt Book Fair. In 2006, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his body of work, as the Swedish Academy noted, "in quest of the melancholic soul of his native city, he discovered new symbols for the clash and interweaving of cultures."