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October 12, 2006

Orhan Pamuk Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

Today the Swedish Academy announced that Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk has won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. A native of Istanbul, Pamuk is known for his vivid, innovative writing, which includes the best-selling novels My Name is Red, Snow, and The Black Book. Pamuk is also famous in his home country for controversial social commentary—in January, an Istanbul court dropped criminal charges against the writer, who had been accused of insulting Turkey’s national identity by discussing the country’s killing of Armenians in World War I and Kurds in subsequent years. In praising Pamuk’s work, the Nobel committee stated that “in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city [he] has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures.”

Posted by hplreadingcorner at 3:43 PM | Comments (1134)