Agence France Presse — English
March 8, 2007 Thursday 11:23 AM GMT
Turkish Nobel laureate to tour Germany after cancellation
BERLIN, March 8 2007
Turkish Nobel literature laureate Orhan Pamuk’s German publisher said
on Thursday he would visit Germany in May for a reading tour which
was planned for February but reportedly cancelled for security
reasons.
"We are delighted that Orhan Pamuk is prepared so soon already to
carry out the visit cancelled on short notice in February," Carl
Hanser Publishing said.
German newspapers had said the writer called off the trip because he
feared for his life after the murder in January of ethnic Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul, but Pamuk did not confirm the
reports.
Dink is believed to have been killed by ultra-nationalists in revenge
for remarks he made about the massacre of Armenians under the Ottoman
empire.
Pamuk, the author of "Snow" and other novels mulling Turkey’s clash
between Muslim and Western culture, has angered Turkish authorities
with similar remarks.
He was prosecuted for telling a Swiss magazine that 30,000 Kurds and
a million Armenians had been killed during World War I under the
Ottoman Turks, but the case was dropped on a technicality.
Pamuk’s tour of Germany will begin in Hamburg on May 2 and will also
take in Berlin, Cologne, Munich and Stuttgart. He will receive an
honorary doctorate from Berlin’s Free University on May 4.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
