Orhan Pamuk

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17 Feb 2024
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Writer. He was born on June 7, 1952 in Istanbul. He grew up in Nişantaşı district and completed his secondary education at Istanbul Robert College (1970). After studying at Istanbul Technical University Faculty of Architecture for a while, he graduated from Istanbul University Faculty of Economics Journalism Institute (1977). He received his master's degree from the institute he graduated from. At the age of twenty-three, he abandoned his other pursuits and pursued only writing. He entered literature in the early 1970s with the poems he published in the "  Yeditepe  " magazine. Then he focused mainly on writing stories, novels and essays.  


He won third place with his story "Dagger" in a competition held within the scope of the Antalya Film Festival. He made a name for himself by sharing the first prize with Mehmet Eroğlu in the 1979 Milliyet Novel Competition with his novel titled " Darkness and Light" . He won the 1983 Orhan Kemal and 1984 Madaralı novel awards with the same novel he published under the name " Cevdet Bey and His Sons " (1982). 1991 Prix de la French translation of “ The Silent House ”European Discoverywon . He gained international fame with his novel " The White Castle " , which was published in 1985 and translated into many languages ​​in 1990 . He was a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York between 1985-88. He received the Prix France Culture (award) for the French translation of “ The Black Book ” (1990). The only script he wrote in 1991 was made into a movie. He won the Prix Du Meilleur Livre Etranger in France, the Grinzane Cavour (2002) and the International Impac-Dublin awards (2003) in Italy with his novel “ My Name is Red ” (1998) . Pamuk was given a prize of one hundred thousand euros along with a document on behalf of the city of Dublin.



Orhan Pamuk's novel writing is evaluated in the "postmodern novel" category. Critic Yıldız Ecevit evaluates his avant-garde (pioneering) novel writing in his book " Reading Orhan Pamuk " . He tells us about himself and the development of events, especially based on his novels " White Castle ", " Black Book ", " New Life ", " My Name is Red ". Likewise, literary historian Jale Parla, in her comprehensive study titled “ Novel from Don Quixote to Today ”, examined Orhan Pamuk's works in the context of comparative literature, starting from “ My Name is Red ”. According to Parla, Pamuk is a writer who is responsible for the important turns the Turkish novel has taken. He is one of the important writers, like Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and Oğuz Atay, who tend to come to terms with the East-West problematic at an aesthetic level. He brought this problematic to his literature with its cultural and philosophical implications, and presented an important, multi-layered literary text example in the context of this theme, especially in " Black Book ".


Orhan Pamuk's works have been translated into thirty-two languages. The statements he made on the Armenian and Kurdish issues in 2005 became the subject of discussion and criticism. In an interview with the Swiss weekly magazine “ Das Magazin ”; “30 thousand Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands. When he said, "No one but me dared to talk about this," a case of "insulting Turkishness" was filed against him in 2005. Reactions came from European Union (EU) officials after the decision to postpone the first hearing of the case. The protests against Pamuk and foreign officials in front of the Şişli Courthouse on the day of the trial received significant coverage in the Turkish and world press. He decided to drop the case at the next hearing.



Again in 2005, he received the "Le Prix Medicis Etranger" award, which is given every year to the best foreign novel in France, with his novel "  Snow  ". Orhan Pamuk made history by receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature on October 12, 2006, becoming the first citizen of the Republic of Turkey to win a Nobel Prize. The Swedish Academy stated the following in its award justification: "The 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Orhan Pamuk, who 'found new symbols for the clash and interweaving of cultures while tracing the melancholic spirit of his city.'" On December 7, 2006, Pamuk gave his Nobel speech, which he prepared under the title "My Father's Suitcase", at the Swedish Academy in Turkish. Audiences who did not speak Turkish followed the speech from the translated text in their hands, and many television channels broadcast his speech live. Orhan Pamuk received his award from King Louis XVI of Sweden at the award ceremony held at the Stockholm Concert Hall on 10 December 2006. Carl took it from Gustaf's hand. Orhan Pamuk is the owner of nearly twenty international awards in the field of literature and has been awarded twelve honorary doctorates by world universities.



“In 'The Possessed', Dostoyevsky describes a period in which atheist socialism was on the rise and explains how this political and metaphysical system plunged people into emptiness, chaos and violence. In 'Snow', he tells about the former socialists who split into two sides in the vacuum that emerged in the political environment after atheist socialism suffered a great defeat, and the chaos they fell into. While some socialists ( as in the example of Mukhtar and Lacivert ) tried to find demands for goodness and justice in political Islam, other socialists ( as in the example of Kar ) tried to realize the dream of a Turkey that would be enlightened through a synthesis of atheist, secular, Western and liberal ideas. (...) Pamuk has masterfully expressed here that false worlds created by instincts collapse with the slightest negativity.” (M. Mukadder Yakupoğlu)


“ Pamuk played the game according to the rules; "My Name is Red" became the face of the author who was looked at, seen and watched when he became the first novel to appear on billboards. The advertising language was chosen in which the knowledge based on recognition and the knowledge of promoting, between those who know an object well and those who promote it, were completely disconnected from each other, and the harmony between the inner text and the outer text was cracked. It is necessary to consider "Snow", the content of which is determined by social interest, as a step towards closing this crack on a new level of harmony. In "Istanbul, Memories and the City", the inner and outer texts completely overlap - I'm afraid they will never be separated again - within the rules of the stardom institution. (Ömer Türkeş)



WORKS:




NOVEL: 



Cevdet Bey and His Sons (1982) , Silent House (1983) , White Castle (1985) , Black Book (1990) , New Life (1994) , My Name is Red (1998) , Snow (2002) , Museum of Innocence (Istanbul 2008).


SCRIPT: 



Hidden Face (1992).


MEMOIR / ESSAY: 



Other Colors - Selected Writings and a Story (1999), Istanbul (2003), Istanbul: Memories and the City (memoir, Istanbul 2003),My Father's Suitcase (memoir, Istanbul 2007), Pieces from the Landscape (selections from his writings and interviews, 2010), Pure and Thoughtful Novelist (Norton Lectures given at Harvard University, 2011).



REFERENCES:


https://www.orhanpamuk.net/biography.aspx


https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2006/pamuk/facts/


https://www.allaboutturkey.com/orhan-pamuk.html


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