A glimpse into Pamuk’s novels

“I strongly feel that the art of the novel is based on the human capacity, though it’s a limited capacity, to be able to identify with “the other.” Only human beings can do this. It requires imagination, a sort of morality, a self-imposed goal of understanding this person who is different from us, which is a rarity” –Orhan Pamuk

In this week’s column, we examine the literary career of Turkish writer, academic and intellectual Orhan Pamuk. The principal motif of Pamuk’s novels is the confusion and loss of identity resulting from the conflict between Western and Eastern values.

Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul in Turkey and grew up in a large family similar to those families he describes in detail in his novels such as Covdet Bey and His Sons and The Black Book.

Nisantasi in Istanbul where Pamuk spent his childhood is a wealthy and westernised district which has provided backdrop to many of his novels. Before becoming a novelist, he wanted to become an artist and architect.

Following his graduation from the secular American Robert College in Istanbul, he studied architecture at Istanbul Technical University for three years.

However, he abandoned the course, giving up his hopes of becoming an artist and architect. Though he never worked as a journalist, he earned a degree in journalism from Istanbul University. At the age of 23, Pamuk gave up everything to become a novelist and retreated into his flat for writing.

Cevdet Bey and His sons

Pamuk’s first novel Cevdet Bey and His Sons which was published in 1982, deals with the family saga of three generations of a wealthy Istanbul and the family lives in Nisantasi, Pamuk’s home district. The novel won the Orhan Kemal and Milliyet literary prizes.

The following year he published The Silent House and the French translation of the novel won the 1991 Prix de la découverte européene. His novel The White Castel (1985) which is about the friction and friendship between a Venetian slave and an Ottoman scholar was published in English and in many other languages in 1990 which established Pamuk as an international writer.

My Name Is Red is about Ottoman and Persian artists. The novel portrays the non-Western world through the eyes of the characters and the novel is woven around a love story and a family saga and was published in 1998. The novel is a fusion of mystery, romance, and philosophical puzzles against a setting of 16th century Istanbul.

It opens a window into the reign of Ottoman Sultan Murat III in nine snowy winter days of 1591, and deals with Pamuk’s dominant theme of tension between East and West.

My Name Is Red has been translated into 24 languages and in 2003 won the International Dublin Literary Award, the world’s most lucrative literary prize. This novel won the French Prix du meilleur livre étranger, the Italian Grinzane Cavour (2002) and the International IMPAC Dublin literary award (2003).

Human rights

Although Pamuk is not interested in politics, his strong stance from mid-1990s towards Turkish state which he articulated through his articles to newspapers about human rights and freedom of expression dragged him into controversy and the hatred spread against him went to the extent of publicly burning his books.

Snow, his political novel which Pamuk describes as ‘ my first and the last political novel’ and was published in 2002, is about violence and tension between political Islamists, soldiers, secularists, and Kurdish and Turkish nationalist.

It is set against the small city of Kars in northern Turkey. Snow was selected as one of the best 100 books of 2004 by The New York Times. In 1999 a collection of his articles on literature and culture written for newspapers and magazines in Turkey and abroad and some of his writings from his private notebooks, was published entitled Other Colours.

Istanbul, is a poetical work which is made up of the author’s early memoirs up to the age of 22, and an essay about the city of Istanbul, illustrated with photographs from his own album, and pictures by western painters and Turkish photographers.

 In 2006, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Significantly, he is the second youngest person to receive the award in its history.

Love story

Museum of Innocence which Pamuk wrote in 2008 deals with a tragic love story in which a highly educated man falls in love with a beautiful woman at first sight. As described in the novel, the writer has, actually, constructed a Museum of Innocence, amassing everyday odds and ends of the writer at an Istanbul house.

What is significant in both Snow and the Museum of Innocence is that although at the beginning it seems that the love stories are superficial, they evolved into intense love stories. The heroes of these novels are highly educated men who tragically fall in love with beauties. However, they are destined to end up in pathetic loneliness.

One of the significant characteristics of Pamuk’s novels apart from dealing with themes such as loss of identity and the clash between tradition and modernity and Western and Eastern values at both micro and macro levels, is his skilful use of modern literary techniques such as Intertexuality and other postmodernist techniques.

What is noteworthy is that the author has captured the milieu and the undercurrents of a globalised society which is constantly being impinged upon by myriad of socio-economic forces.