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Orhan Pamuk wins Nobel prize
Richard Lea and agencies
Thursday October 12, 2006
Guardian Unlimited (United Kingdom)
The Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, whose trial on charges of "insulting
Turkishness" was dropped earlier this year, has won the 2006 Nobel
prize for literature.
The Swedish Academy praised the author's work, which includes the
bestselling novels Snow and My Name is Red and a memoir of his home
city, Istanbul, saying that "in the quest for the melancholic soul of
his native city [he] has discovered new symbols for the clash and
interlacing of cultures."
Pamuk's work, which has achieved both critical and commercial success
in Turkey and beyond, examines questions of identity, and explores the
transformations of modern Turkish society.
The announcement by Horace Engdahl, head of the Swedish Academy, in
Stockholm this lunchtime drew a brief but intense round of applause.
At 7-1, 54-year-old Pamuk was third favourite with bookmakers
Ladbrokes in the run up to the prize, after the perennial Nobel
contender Ali Ahmad Said, the Syrian poet better known as Adonis (3-1)
and the American author Joyce Carol Oates (6-1).
The award follows last year's decision by the Academy to honour the
playwright Howard Pinter, who used his acceptance speech to launch an
attack on US foreign policy.
Richard Lea and agencies
Thursday October 12, 2006
Guardian Unlimited (United Kingdom)
The Turkish author Orhan Pamuk, whose trial on charges of "insulting
Turkishness" was dropped earlier this year, has won the 2006 Nobel
prize for literature.
The Swedish Academy praised the author's work, which includes the
bestselling novels Snow and My Name is Red and a memoir of his home
city, Istanbul, saying that "in the quest for the melancholic soul of
his native city [he] has discovered new symbols for the clash and
interlacing of cultures."
Pamuk's work, which has achieved both critical and commercial success
in Turkey and beyond, examines questions of identity, and explores the
transformations of modern Turkish society.
The announcement by Horace Engdahl, head of the Swedish Academy, in
Stockholm this lunchtime drew a brief but intense round of applause.
At 7-1, 54-year-old Pamuk was third favourite with bookmakers
Ladbrokes in the run up to the prize, after the perennial Nobel
contender Ali Ahmad Said, the Syrian poet better known as Adonis (3-1)
and the American author Joyce Carol Oates (6-1).
The award follows last year's decision by the Academy to honour the
playwright Howard Pinter, who used his acceptance speech to launch an
attack on US foreign policy.