NOBEL WINNER PAMUK SAYS NEW NOVEL OUT IN FALL
CBC News, Canada
May 8, 2007 Tuesday 4:45 PM GMT
Five years after his last novel and a year after winning the Nobel
Prize for literature, Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk has announced a
publishing date for his new novel.
Speaking in Stuttgart, Germany, where he is on a lecture tour, Pamuk
said the book, The Museum of Innocence, would be published in October
in Turkey.
Pamuk said the novel is the story of a love affair set in Turkey’s
high society and described it as both sad and ironic, according to
Agence France-Press.
His last book, Snow, was published in 2002 and his previous book,
My Name is Red, won the IMPAC Dublin Award.
Pamuk has been under fire in Turkey over his criticism of the treatment
of the Kurds and his discussion of Turkey’s role in the deaths of
Armenians early in the 20th century.
He was said to have received death threats and cancelled a lecture
tour of Germany earlier this year after the murder of Turkish-Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink.
However, he is scheduled to return to Turkey May 15 as a keynote
speaker for the International Press Institute’s World Congress.
He was awarded an honorary doctorate at the Free University of Berlin
last Friday.
Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit, speaking at the ceremony, said that
Pamuk’s enemies "are all our enemies, and also the enemies of Turkish
European Union membership."
Turkey has applied for EU membership but EU countries have criticized
its laws restricting free speech, including the law that makes it a
crime to "insult Turkishness."
This law was used to prosecute Pamuk over remarks he made to a German
newspaper in 2005 about the Armenian killings.