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The novelist Orhan Pamuk was born on June 7, 1952 in Istanbul and carries the distinct honor of being awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2006.
Pamuk graduated from the Department of Journalism of Istanbul University in 1976, and completed his graduate studies at the same institution in 1979. Even though he was educated in journalism, after the 1970s, Orhan Pamuk made literature his profession. In the initial stages of his literary career, the author composed works in other genres as well. His first poems appeared in 1970 in the publication Yeditepe. His stories, memoirs and essays have been published in Gösteri, Yeni Dü�?ün, Kadın, Milliyet Sanat, Defter, Express, Öküz, Cumhuriyet Gençlik, Cumhuriyet Kitap, and Radikal.
Orhan Pamuk’s first novel Cevdet Bey ve O�?ulları, which tells the story of three generations of a family, did not contribute much to his fame. However, his subsequent two novels earned him international renown. The first of these, Sessiz Ev relates the transformation of the relationship of three unhappy siblings who spend a week in a little coastal town in the house of their ninety-year-old grandmother. His third novel Beyaz Kale takes up the themes of dream versus reality, the East versus the West, and the traditional versus the modern. Although Sessiz Ev brought Orhan Pamuk the 1991 Prix de la découverte européene award in France, his masterpiece and the turning point of his literary career was the novel Kara Kitap, which appeared in 1990. The author states, “Kara Kitap was about finding a story line that would reflect the violence of life in Istanbul, its colors and its chaos. It seems to me that the long, vertigo-inducing baroque sentences that revolve around themselves have emerged from the chaos of the city, its history and current wealth, its inconsistency and energy. Kara Kitap was written with the excitement of relating everything concerning Istanbul all at once, and it did just that. One of the claims of the novel is that it attempts to live 1001 Nights in Istanbul.” Kara Kitap is a multi-foiled novel that contains many archetypal forms including the fairy tale tradition of the east, mystical anecdotes, parables, as well as materials from �?eyh Galip, and Rumi. The work, which was translated into many languages, is a turning point both for Orhan Pamuk’s literary career and for Turkish literature as it incorporated ancient materials within an innovative plotline.
His next work Yeni Hayat is a travel novel, which deals with themes such as death, accident, coincidence, time, love, writing, unhappiness, being a second-class citizen, rural life, oppression, and heartbreak. Using a cheerless but fervent language, the novel questions the meaning of existence through expanded intuitions. Orhan Pamuk states that Yeni Hayat has a particular feel that sets it apart from all of his other novels, and that it “dares to speak like a poet through the inner rhythm and inner colors of the storyline.”
Orhan Pamuk states, “Each of my novels emerges from the previous one,” and his latest novel Benim Adım Kırmızı, which has received worldwide critical acclaim, and has become epitomic of modern Turkish literature, takes place in Istanbul on a snowy nine-day period. In the novel, the beautiful �?eküre is seeking for a lover to replace her husband who has not returned from war in the last four years. In her home, her father, an administrator in the Ottoman court is supervising the craftsmen who are illustrating a book that Sultan Murat III has secretly commissioned, and �?eküre is keeping herself occupied by secretly watching on them. In the opening of the novel, one of master craftsmen who is making dangerous, European-influenced drawings dies, and �?eküre’s cousin who in love with her, enters into the picture. Just like Sessiz Ev, all of the characters of this novel speak from the first person, and dead people and inanimate objects speak. The novel, which is one of Orhan Pamuk’s most popular recent works, has been translated into many different languages, and deals with death, art, love, marriage, unhappiness, and love at first sight.
ORHAN PAMUK’S WORKS:
NOVELS: Karanlık ve I�?ık (Darkness and Light, 1980), Cevdet Bey ve O�?ulları (Cevdet Bey and His Sons, 1982), Sessiz Ev (Silent House, 1983), Beyaz Kale (The White Castle, 1985), Kara Kitap (The Black Book, 1990), Yeni Hayat (New Life, 1994), Benim Adım Kırmızı (My Name is Red, 1998), Kar (Snow, 2002).
SCREENPLAY: Gizli Yüz (Hidden Face, 1992).
MEMOIR-ESSAY: Öteki Renkler (Other Colors, 1999), İstanbul (İstanbul, 2003).
* Biographical information concerning Orhan Pamuk has been gathered from Tanzimat’tan Bugüne Edebiyatçılar
Ansiklopedisi.
Reference: Yesim Gokce (Bilkent University)/Turkish Cultural Foundation
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