Orkhan Pamuk

Ferit Orhan Pamuk is a contemporary Turkish writer and the recipient of several national and international literary awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature (2006).

He is popular both in Turkey and abroad, and his works have been translated into more than fifty languages. He is known for his civic stance on the Armenian Genocide and the discrimination against Kurds in Turkey, which does not coincide with the views of the official Turkish authorities.

Pamuk was born on 7 July 1952 in Istanbul into a wealthy family; his grandfather founded a large hemp factory. He studied at the American Robert College in Istanbul. After graduating, at his family’s insistence, he enrolled at Istanbul Technical University (his parents wanted him to become a civil engineer), but after three years he left the university to become a professional writer.

In 1977, Pamuk graduated from the journalism institute at Istanbul University. Between 1985 and 1988 he lived in the United States, working as a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York, but later returned to Turkey.

From 1982 to 2001 he was married to the historian Aylin Turegen and has a daughter, Rüya (born 1991) (her name means “Dream” in Turkish).

Until 2007 he lived in Istanbul, but after the murder of Hrant Dink he emigrated to New York again due to threats from nationalists.

From 1982 to 2001 he was married and has a daughter. For some time Pamuk was attributed a relationship with the well-known Indian writer Kiran Desai. Since 2010, the common-law wife of Orhan Pamuk has been Aslı Akyavaş, with whom the writer has had a long-standing relationship.

Literary work

His first major work was the family saga novel Cevdet Bey and His Sons, which tells the story of several generations of an Istanbul family.

The main themes of the writer’s work are conflict and confrontation between East and West, Islam and Christianity, tradition and modernity. For example, the conflict between westernism and Islamism in modern Turkey is the central theme of the 2002