Orhan Pamuk, Turkey

Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk became the first Nobel laureate in literature ever to emerge from his country.

Known for his epic, multifaceted stories in which the protagonist is often caught between two worlds, Pamuk interweaves elements from the West’s pantheon of postmodern prose into his fiction while also blurring the line between realism and fantasy that is a hallmark of the greatest works of Arabic literature. “The polarities of Pamuk’s books,” noted the New Yorker ‘s David Remnick, “echo the basic polarities of Istanbul: the tension between East and West, the pull of an Islamic past and the lure of modern European manners and materialism. Mr Pamuk created the Museum of Innocence in Istanbul at the same time he wrote his novel being a perfect symbiosis between museology, literature and cultural landscapes. 

Orhan Pamuk’s books have been translated into 63 languages, including Georgian, Malayan, Czech, Danish, Japanese, Catalan, as well as English, German and French. Pamuk has been awarded The Peace Prize, considered the most prestigious award in Germany in the field of culture, in 2005. In the same year, Snow received the Le Prix Médicis étranger, the award for the best foreign novel in France. Again in 2005, Pamuk was honoured with the Richarda Huck Prize, awarded every three years since 1978 to personalities who “think independently and act bravely.” In the same year, he was named among world’s 100 intellectuals by Prospect magazine.

In 2006, TIME magazine chose him as one of the 100 most influential persons of the world. In September 2006, he won the Le Prix Méditerranée étranger for his novel Snow. Pamuk is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and holds an honorary doctorate from Tilburg University. He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as the Chiese Academy for Social Sciences. Pamuk gives lectures once a year in Columbia University. He received the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming the second youngest person to receive the award in its history.

In 2014, Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence received the European Museum of the Year Award (EMYA) given by European Museum Forum in Tallinn, Estonia. In the same year Pamuk also received Helena Vaz Da Silva European Award, an award which “acknowledges exceptional contributions to the communication on cultural heritage and European ideals”.

In 2015, he received two significant prizes in Turkey for his ninth novel, A Strangeness in My Mind: Aydın Doğan Foundation Award and Erdal Öz Literary Prize.