Controversial Turkish novelist wins Nobel
Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist who a few months ago was prosecuted for allegedly being unpatriotic, won the Nobel Prize for literature on Thursday.The writer of Snow, My Name is Red and other acclaimed novels is the first Turk to win a Nobel Prize, and its award to such a politically-engaged writer is certain to cause controversy in Turkey.
Mr Pamuk, who is 54, is by far the country’s best-known writer. But last December he was almost imprisoned for remarks he made in a magazine interview in which he said Turkey had to face up to its historical responsibility for the massacre of Armenians during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
I support Mr. Pamuk being lauded for his courage in standing up to the Turkish Government over the Armenian genocide. Certainly he deserves much praise for that. I am skeptical though that the Nobel Prize for literature is the best venue for such a thing.
Of course the Swedish Academy says that this was purely on the merits of his literature, and not his politcs, and perhaps that is true, I haven’t read anything of his so I don’t have any opinion on the merits. Still, it seems somewhat of a coincidence that he wins in the same year as his great political controversy.
