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 Thursday.
Pamuk, a fellow at Columbia University, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview he was overjoyed by the award and accepted it not just as “a personal honor but as an honor bestowed upon the Turkish literature and culture I represent.”
The author did have one complaint: The Swedish Academy announced the prize at 7 a.m. EDT.
“They called and woke me up, so I was a bit sleepy,” said Pamuk, 54, adding that he had no immediate plans to celebrate but looked forward to being with friends back in Turkey.
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 own governments.
British playwright Harold Pinter, a blunt 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 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 harshly criticized the trial.
The charges against Pamuk were dropped in January.
“I think that Orhan Pamuk was a splendid choice for the Nobel Prize, not only for the evident literary merit of his work but because of his courageous defiance of political pieties in Turkey,” historian Ron Chernow, president of the PEN American Center, the U.S. chapter of the international writers/human-rights organization, said in an e-mail.
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.
“What Faulkner did was to combine complicated history with modernist literature, experimental literature, with an art that is authentic and new and daring. I have also tried to do that,” Pamuk said.
Literature winners often controversial
Nobel prizes for literature are supposed to be awarded for artistic merit, but in the past judges often have favored writers at odds with their governments or societies. Some examples:
2006: Orhan Pamuk, Turkey – Charged with “insulting Turkishness” in his writings; the charges were later dropped.
2005: Harold Pinter, Britain – The playwright opposes his country’s involvement in the Iraq war.
2004: Elfriede Jelinek, Austria – The novelist and playwright has spoken out against what she regarded as her government’s nationalism.
1993: Toni Morrison, United States – Her stories have focused on American society’s mistreatment of black women.
1991: Nadine Gordimer, South Africa – A leading voice against the former apartheid system of official racial inequality.
1986: Wole Soyinka, Nigeria – A longtime opponent of oppression in his own country and elsewhere in Africa, Soyinka was jailed in the late 1960s for his activism.
1970: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Soviet Union – The author’s writings chronicle the evils of the Soviet political-prison system. He was later exiled.
1967: Miguel Ángel Asturias, Guatemala – The writer and diplomat was active in opposing Guatemalan dictatorship in his early years and at one point was exiled.
1958: Boris Pasternak, Soviet Union – The author of “Doctor Zhivago,” depicting the hardships of Russia’s communist revolution, was not allowed to accept the award.
Sources: Denver Post research, Nobelprize .org, The Associated Press
