The Daily Star, Lebanon
Oct 13 2006

Turkey’s Pamuk wins Nobel Prize for Literature

Friday, October 13, 2006

BEIRUT: Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s most famous novelist and an outspoken
critic of his country’s restrictive policies regarding free speech,
has won the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature, the Swedish Academy in
Stockholm announced Thursday. Pamuk is the author of one memoir and
nine novels, five of which have been translated into English,
including "Snow," "The Black Book" and "My Name is Red."

Beating a crowd of strong contenders (though the academy keeps its
short list secret), Pamuk is the first writer from the Middle East to
win the coveted Nobel, worth $1.36 million, since Egypt’s Naguib
Mahfouz won in 1988.

The award citation praised Pamuk for discovering "in the quest for
the melancholic soul of his native city … new symbols for the clash
and interlacing of cultures."

Last year, Pamuk was brought up on charges of denigrating
"Turkishness" for a comment to a Swiss publication about the killing
of more than million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds by Ottoman Turks
during World War I. The case was dropped in early 2006.