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Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk wins Nobel
2006-10-12
Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, whose uncommon lyrical gifts and uncompromising politics have brought him acclaim worldwide and prosecution at home, won the Nobel literature prize Thursday for his works dealing with the symbols of clashing cultures. The selection of Pamuk, whose recent trial for "insulting Turkishness" raised concerns about free speech in Turkey, continues a trend among Nobel judges of picking writers in conflict with their own governments. British playwright Harold Pinter, a strong opponent of his country's involvement in the Iraq war, won last year. Elfriede Jelinek, a longtime critic of Austria's conservative politicians and social class, was the 2004 winner. Pamuk, whose novels include "Snow" and "My Name is Red," was charged last year for telling a Swiss newspaper in February 2005 that Turkey was unwilling to deal with two of the most painful episodes in recent Turkish history: the massacre of Armenians during World War I, which Turkey insists was not a planned genocide, and recent guerrilla fighting in Turkey's overwhelmingly Kurdish southeast. "Thirty-thousand Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands, and nobody but me dares to talk about it," he said in the interview. The controversy came at a particularly sensitive time for the overwhelmingly Muslim country. Turkey had recently begun membership talks with the European Union, which has harshly criticized the trial, questioning Turkey's commitment to freedom of expression. The charges against Pamuk were dropped in January, ending the high-profile trial that outraged Western observers and cast doubt on Turkey's commitment to free speech. The Swedish Academy said that the 54-year-old Istanbul-born Pamuk "in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures." Academy head Horace Engdahl said Pamuk's political situation in Turkey had not affected the decision. "It could, of course, lead to some political turbulence, but we are not interested in that," Engdahl said. "He is a controversial person in his own country, but on the other hand, so are almost all of our prize winners." He said Pamuk was selected because he had "enlarged the roots of the contemporary novel" through his links to both Western and Eastern culture. "This means that he has stolen the novel, one can say, from us Westerners and has transformed it to something different from what we have ever seen before," Engdahl said. Earlier Thursday, French lawmakers in the National Assembly in Paris approved a bill making it a crime to deny that the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey during and after World War I amounted to genocide, a move that has infuriated Turkey. Pamuk has long been considered a contender for the Nobel prize and he figured high among pundits and bookmakers. His works, written in Turkish, have been translated into languages, including English, French, Swedish and German. Pamuk's prize marked the first time that a writer from a predominantly Muslim country has been honored for literature since 1988, when the award went to Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz, who died in August. In its citation, the academy said that "Pamuk has said that growing up, he experienced a shift from a traditional Ottoman family environment to a more Western-oriented lifestyle. He wrote about this in his first published novel, a family chronicle ... which in the spirit of Thomas Mann follows the development of a family over three generations." "Pamuk's international breakthrough came with his third novel, 'The White Castle.' It is structured as an historical novel set in 17th-century Istanbul, but its content is primarily a story about how our ego builds on stories and fictions of different sorts. Personality is shown to be a variable construction," the academy said. Engdahl said the "The Black Book," was his personal favorite among Pamuk's works. "He has a flowing imagination and impressive ingenuity," Engdahl told Swedish radio. In winning the prize, Pamuk's already solid reputation will be boosted onto a global stage. He will also see out-of-print works returned into circulation and a sales boost. He will also receive a $1.4 million check, a gold medal and diploma, and an invitation to a lavish banquet in Stockholm on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of prize founder Alfred Nobel. ___ Associated Press writer Mattias Karen contributed to this report. ___ On the Net: http://www.svenskaakademien.se http://www.nobelprize.org Muzi.com News
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