42 Facts About Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk is the Robert Yik-Fong Tam Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he teaches writing and comparative literature.

Orhan Pamuk was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018.

Orhan Pamuk is the recipient of numerous other literary awards.

Orhan Pamuk said his intention had been to highlight issues of freedom of speech in Turkey.

The court initially declined to hear the case, but in 2011 Orhan Pamuk was ordered to pay 6,000 liras in compensation for having insulted the plaintiffs' honor.

Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul, in 1952, and grew up in a wealthy but declining upper-class family, an experience he describes in passing in his novels The Black Book and Cevdet Bey and His Sons, as well as more thoroughly in his personal memoir Istanbul: Memories and the City.

Orhan Pamuk was educated at Robert College secondary school in Istanbul and studied architecture at the Istanbul Technical University, a subject related to his dream career, painting.

Orhan Pamuk left architecture school after three years to become a full-time writer, and graduated from the Institute of Journalism at the University of Istanbul in 1976.

From ages 22 to 30, Orhan Pamuk lived with his mother, writing his first novel and attempting to find a publisher.

Orhan Pamuk describes himself as a Cultural Muslim who identifies with Islam historically and culturally while not believing in a personal connection to God.

Orhan Pamuk won a number of critical prizes for his early work, including the 1984 Madarali Novel Prize for his second novel Sessiz Ev and the 1991 Prix de la Decouverte Europeenne for its French translation.

In 1999, Orhan Pamuk published his book of essays Oteki Renkler.

Orhan Pamuk followed this with the novel Kar, published in 2002.

In May 2007, Orhan Pamuk was among the jury members at the Cannes Film Festival headed by British director Stephen Frears.

Orhan Pamuk completed his next novel, Masumiyet Muzesi in the summer of 2008 - the first novel he published after receiving the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Orhan Pamuk created an actual Museum of Innocence, consisting of everyday objects tied to the narrative, and housed them at an Istanbul house he purchased.

Orhan Pamuk collaborated on a documentary "The Innocence of Memories" that expanded on his Museum of Innocence.

Orhan Pamuk stated that " tell a different version of the love story set in Istanbul through objects and Grant Gee's wonderful new film".

In both Snow and the Museum of Innocence Orhan Pamuk describes tragic love-stories, where men fall in love with beautiful women at first sight.

Orhan Pamuk's heroes tend to be educated men who fall tragically in love with beauties, but who seem doomed to a decrepit loneliness.

In 2013, Orhan Pamuk invited Grazia Toderi, whose work he admired, to design a work for the Museum of Innocence in Istanbul.

Orhan Pamuk's books are characterized by a confusion or loss of identity brought on in part by the conflict between Western and Eastern values.

Orhan Pamuk's works are redolent with discussion of and fascination with the creative arts, such as literature and painting.

Orhan Pamuk speaks about "the angel of inspiration" when he discusses his creativity:.

Orhan Pamuk himself said that his works have been inspired by the writings of rebel poet Kazi Nazrul Islam.

Orhan Pamuk's elder brother Sevket Orhan Pamuk, who sometimes appears as a fictional character in his works, is a professor of economics internationally recognised for his work in economic history of the Ottoman Empire, working at Bogazici University in Istanbul.

Orhan Pamuk has a younger half-sister Humeyra Orhan Pamuk, who is a journalist.

From 1985 to 1988, while she was a graduate student at Columbia University, Orhan Pamuk assumed the position of visiting scholar there, using the time to conduct research and write his novel The Black Book at the university's Butler Library.

Orhan Pamuk returned to Istanbul, a city to which he is strongly attached.

In 2006, Orhan Pamuk returned to the US to take a position as a visiting professor at Columbia, where he was a Fellow with Columbia's Committee on Global Thought and held an appointment in Columbia's Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department and at its School of the Arts.

Orhan Pamuk publicly acknowledged his relationship with the writer Kiran Desai.

In January 2011, Turkish-Armenian artist Karolin Fisekci told Hurriyet Daily News that Orhan Pamuk had a two-and-a-half-year relationship with her during the same time, which Orhan Pamuk expressly denied.

In 2005, after Orhan Pamuk made a statement about the Armenian genocide and mass killings of Kurds, a criminal case was opened against him based on a complaint filed by lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz.

Orhan Pamuk subsequently said his intent was to draw attention to freedom of speech issues.

On 27 March 2011, Orhan Pamuk was found guilty and ordered to pay 6,000 liras in compensation to five people for, among other things, having insulted their honor.

The criminal charges against Orhan Pamuk resulted from remarks he made during an interview in February 2005 with the Swiss publication Das Magazin, a weekly supplement to a number of Swiss daily newspapers: the Tages-Anzeiger, the Basler Zeitung, the Berner Zeitung and the Solothurner Tagblatt.

Orhan Pamuk said he was consequently subjected to a hate campaign that forced him to flee the country.

Orhan Pamuk returned later in 2005 to face the charges against him.

On 29 December 2005, Turkish state prosecutors dropped the charge that Orhan Pamuk insulted Turkey's armed forces, although the charge of "insulting Turkishness" remained.

The charges against Orhan Pamuk caused an international outcry and led to questions in some circles about Turkey's proposed entry into the European Union.

In 2008, in an open online poll, Orhan Pamuk was voted as the fourth most intellectual person in the world on the list of Top 100 Public Intellectuals by Prospect Magazine and Foreign Policy.

Several reports suggest that Orhan Pamuk was among the figures this group plotted to kill.