Lauded abroad, hated at home
Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel prize will empower a voice of reason, writes books
editor Murray Waldren
14oct06

ORHAN Pamuk’s Nobel prize is a rare if conspicuous convergence of
political motivation with literary merit. In January, Turkey’s most
famous writer became an international cause celebre when he faced a
three-year jail termfor "insulting Turkishness"; yesterday he became
an international celebrity after the Swedish Academy awarded the
54-year-old novelist its 10 million kroner ($1.8million) prize for the
world’s richest and most celebrated literary award.

His win was also an uncommon victory for the bookies’ favourite.

There’s no doubting Pamuk’s literary skill. His works sing, often at
considerable length, with allusive harmonies, written as they are with
a respect for tradition but also with a thoroughly modern mien.

And while it is a mixed marriage, sometimes of inconvenience, between
East and West, his gaze is unblinking as he focuses on the friction
caused by clashing cultures, and between Islam and the secular world.

Equally, there is no doubting the political imperative behind his
crowning as Nobel laureate. Western commentators have fallen over
themselves to praise the decision as a triumph for freedom of speech,
for laudable literature and as an eminent accomplishment for Turkey.

(The Wall Street Journal, however, suggests the award may be better
named the Nobel prize for most provocative public intellectual.)

Pamuk earned Turkish government ire last year when he talked in an
interview with a Swiss newspaper about the World War I massacre of 1.5
million Armenians and the deaths of 30,000 Kurdish separatists in the
1980s and ’90s.

Ultra-nationalists in Turkey persecuted him and he was soon prosecuted
under the Turkish penal code for "insulting Turkishness, the republic
and state institutions". Although the charges were dropped as a
demonstration of the social progress needed for membership in the
European Union, the law remains on the books.

In New York where he has been working and studying incognito at
Columbia University, Pamuk refused to answer political questions after
his win was announced, but he did suggest it would raise the
international profile of Turkish literature: "This will lead the world
to review Turkish culture as a culture of peace," he said.

Others are less sanguine, suggesting the West would be more inclined
these days to view with favour this week’s vote in the French National
Assembly that sought to make it a criminal undertaking for anyone to
deny that Armenians experienced genocide in Turkey in 1915.

Pamuk was born into a Westernised, well-off secular family in Istanbul
and, although not a practising Muslim, he has often lamented the
spiritual void created in Turkish society by modernisation. The
dilemmas and dichotomies of his, and Turkey’s, mixed identity are
crucial to his books. He has said that he is "the servant of the grand
art of the novel, and in that sense I am European", but he has also
said that he looks through "my Turkish window and I try to breathe
everything in from there". That, he says, "is what goes into my
novels".

In their citation, the Nobel judges praised Pamuk for "enlarging the
roots of the contemporary novel" through his East-West links. And
certainly, as the pre-eminent novelist in the Muslim world with a
Western readership, he delivers a vision of a free Muslim society
where space exists for conservatives, nationalists and the Westernised
alike.

Pamuk had already won the world’s richest literary prize for a single
novel- the Nobel is awarded for a body of work – after My Name is Red
picked up the Impac Dublin Literary Award. A quasi-murder mystery set
in 16th-century Istanbul, it broke him into Western consciousness and
led to interest in his earlier novels, The White Castle and Snow.

His most recent publication was not a novel but a memoir cum
meditation on his native city, Istanbul.

Yet the tone of all his work is essentially one of exile, and morose,
as if at heart he understands that his dream of a liberal society is
unobtainable.

And as much as he is loved by readers, he is also reviled by
opponents. The Left regularly claims he has sold out to Europe, the
Right criticises him for attacking human rights abuse, hardline
Muslims are incensed by what they see as his portrayal of them as
killers.

It is unusual for a literary award to appear noble in intention:
literary prizes, after all, should be awarded for literary worth. But
it can’t be denied that if literary worth also empowers a voice of
vision and reason, it is a script worth writing.

© The Australian