Pamuk wins the award for literature

NEW YORK – Novelist Orhan Pamuk, an international symbol of literary and social conscience, whose poetic, melancholy journeys into the soul of his native Turkey have brought him the many blessings and burdens of public life, won the Nobel literature prize on Thursday.

Pamuk, a fellow at Columbia University, told The Associated Press he was overjoyed by the award and accepted it not just as “a personal honour, but as an honour bestowed upon the Turkish literature and culture I represent”. The selection of Pamuk, whose recent trial for “insulting Turkishness” made headlines worldwide, continues a trend among Nobel judges of picking writers in conflict with their governments.British playwright Harold Pinter, a blunt opponent of his country’s involvement in the Iraq war, won last year.Elfriede Jelinek, a long-time 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.The controversy came at a particularly sensitive time for the overwhelmingly Muslim country.Turkey had recently begun membership talks with the European Union, which harshly criticised the trial.The charges against Pamuk were dropped in January.Pamuk embodies the push and pull between East and West, between writers and the state, between what we know and what we want to know.Pamuk has become a celebrated and resented reminder of his country’s darkest past, like such Nobel laureates as Germany’s Guenter Grass and Mississippi native William Faulkner, whose tormented narratives of the American South became models for Pamuk.Pamuk was the first Muslim writer to defend Salman Rushdie when Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned Rushdie to death because of ‘The Satanic Verses’, a satire of the Prophet Mohammed published in 1989.Pamuk has also been supportive of Kurdish rights.Nampa-APThe selection of Pamuk, whose recent trial for “insulting Turkishness” made headlines worldwide, continues a trend among Nobel judges of picking writers in conflict with their governments.British playwright Harold Pinter, a blunt opponent of his country’s involvement in the Iraq war, won last year.Elfriede Jelinek, a long-time 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.The controversy came at a particularly sensitive time for the overwhelmingly Muslim country.Turkey had recently begun membership talks with the European Union, which harshly criticised the trial.The charges against Pamuk were dropped in January.Pamuk embodies the push and pull between East and West, between writers and the state, between what we know and what we want to know.Pamuk has become a celebrated and resented reminder of his country’s darkest past, like such Nobel laureates as Germany’s Guenter Grass and Mississippi native William Faulkner, whose tormented narratives of the American South became models for Pamuk.Pamuk was the first Muslim writer to defend Salman Rushdie when Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned Rushdie to death because of ‘The Satanic Verses’, a satire of the Prophet Mohammed published in 1989.Pamuk has also been supportive of Kurdish rights.Nampa-AP