NOBEL NOVELIST PAMUK SAYS HE’S NOT A WRITER IN EXILE

Ottawa Citizen, Canada
Final Edition
May 31, 2007 Thursday

HAY-ON-WYE, Wales – Nobel prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk,
threatened by a suspect in the slaying of a journalist, said on Tuesday
he had recently been in Turkey and did not consider himself a writer
in exile.

The 2006 Literature Laureate’s safety became an issue after
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was killed in Istanbul in
January.

A key suspect warned Pamuk to be careful and some media reports had
said Pamuk was living in exile.

However, Pamuk, who won the Nobel for novels including Snow and
My Name is Red, told an audience at the Hay literature festival in
Britain he had recently visited Turkey.

Asked about suggestions he was a writer in exile, he said, "There is
some political pressure on me. I was just in Turkey. There were some
misunderstandings and clarifying these misunderstandings took some
energy, but we should not dwell on them too much here."

Pamuk, who was on the jury of the Cannes Film Festival last week,
was prosecuted in 2005 under laws restricting freedom of expression in
Turkey after telling a Swiss newspaper that one million Armenians had
died in Turkey in the First World War and 30,000 Kurds had perished
more recently.

Charges against him were dropped after his case triggered criticism
from the European Union, which Turkey hopes to join.

Pamuk said he planned to publish his next novel in Turkey in
December. The book, Museum of Innocence, is about an upper-middle
class man in contemporary Istanbul obsessed with a cousin.