Washington Post, DC
March 8 2007
Nobel prize winner Pamuk to tour Germany after all
Reuters
Thursday, March 8, 2007; 1:06 PM
BERLIN (Reuters) – Nobel-prize winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk
will embark on a book reading tour in Germany in May after he
canceled the visit at short notice five weeks ago amid concerns for
his safety.
Christina Knecht, a spokeswoman for Carl Hanser Verlag, Pamuk’s
German publisher, said the writer had always intended to meet his
commitments at some point.
"Nothing has really changed, he always said the tour was never
completely off. Now he’s suggested May, and we’re delighted that we
were able to find new dates with the organizers fairly quickly," she
said.
The safety of Pamuk, 54, became an issue after the murder in January
of the prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul.
A key suspect in that murder, escorted by police into a court house,
had warned Pamuk to be careful.
"He canceled the tour without giving any reason, but I think it was
really more about the situation in Turkey, and that he was being
pursued for weeks there," Knecht said, adding that as far as she
knew, Pamuk was probably in the United States now.
Dink and Pamuk were both prosecuted under laws restricting freedom of
expression in Turkey, which wants to join the EU.
Pamuk was tried for insulting "Turkishness" after telling a Swiss
paper in 2005 that 1 million Armenians had died in Turkey in World
War One and 30,000 Kurds had perished more recently.
Pamuk, whose best-known novels include "Snow," in which the main
character is shot in Frankfurt, has a big following in Germany, home
to about 2.5 million people of Turkish descent.
He is due to open the rescheduled tour in Hamburg on May 2, before
visiting Berlin, Stuttgart and Cologne. The trip will end on May 8 in
Munich. While in Berlin, Pamuk is due to receive an honorary
doctorate from the city’s Free University.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
