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Orhan Pamuk

Headshot of Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk is a Nobel prizewinning novelist

March 2025

  • Man in a mask holding a Turkish flag lifts his arms in front of a line of riot police as a crowd of people head towards a blossoming tree at night

    double quotation markI’ve never seen such clampdowns in Istanbul. Turkey’s democracy is fighting for its life

    Orhan Pamuk
    The jailing of President Erdoğan’s main political rival is the low point of a decade-long march towards autocracy – but the protesters aren’t done yet either, says writer Orhan Pamuk

June 2022

  • The lives of others … from Museum Bhavan by Dayanita Singh.

    ‘Images you can smell’ – novelist Orhan Pamuk on Dayanita Singh’s mesmerising photos of India’s disintegrating archives

    Where does a state’s power truly reside? Not in its military, says the celebrated writer, but in the Kafkaesque files it keeps on its citizens – and no one showed this more brilliantly than Singh

January 2019

  • Polish nationalists march in November 2017.

    double quotation markFight for Europe – or the wreckers will destroy it

    Bernard-Henri Lévy, Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie, Elfriede Jelinek, Orhan Pamuk and 25 others
    We urge European patriots to resist the nationalist onslaught, say 30 writers including Bernard-Henri Lévy, Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie, Elfriede Jelinek and Orhan Pamuk

January 2016

  • Nobel-prize winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk poses on the balcony of his home in Istanbul August 27, 2010. Pamuk, Turkey's most celebrated artist, has explored his country's struggle with tradition and modernity and its identity as a land that straddles East and West in novels infused with "huzun", a Turkish word that refers to melancholy or spiritual loss. Picture taken August 27, 2010. REUTERS/Murad Sezer (TURKEY - Tags: SOCIETY CITYSCAPE)

    Exhibition at the pictures: Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence on screen

    His story of unrequited love in 1970s Istanbul was conceived as both a novel and a collection of related objects. Now, Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence has inspired a film that explores his memories of the city

April 2015

  • Orhan Pamuk with Anselm Kiefer.

    When Orhan Pamuk met Anselm Kiefer

  • Günter Grass

    Günter Grass: the man who broke the silence

December 2013

  • Author composite including Tom Stoppard

    International bill of digital rights: call from 500 writers around the world

    In a petition to the United Nations, a group of authors agree that democratic rights must apply in virtual as in real space

October 2012

  • Istanbul named European Capital of Culture 2010

    double quotation markEurope is turning away from Turkey – and the rest of the world

    Orhan Pamuk

    Orhan Pamuk: Whatever happened to liberté, égalité, fraternité? Fear of Muslims is putting Europe's secular tradition at risk

April 2012

  • Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence bookcase

    Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence - in pictures

    Gallery5
  • Orhan Pamuk in the Museum of Innocence

    State museums are so antiquated

December 2010

  • My Europe
    double quotation markThe souring of Turkey's European dream

    Orhan Pamuk

    In the first of My Europe, a series in which writers look beyond the financial crisis, Orhan Pamuk laments a growing callousness to migrants and minorities

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