Saturday, May 19, 2007

Orhan Pamuk - Nobel Prize winner 2006

Orhan Pamuk, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature for the year 2006. He is a Turkish writer born in 1952. Among his novels are included: 'Darkness and Light'(1979)- later published as 'Mr. Cevdet and His Sons' in 1982 , 'The Silent House'(1984), 'The White Castle'(1985), 'The Black Book'(1990), 'The New Life'(1997),'My Name is Red'(2000), 'Snow'(translated in 2004).
In his nobel lecture entitled 'My Father's Suitcase' he talks about the inspiration his father provided him. A small suitcase, filled with his father's writings, manuscripts and notebooks, was Pamuk's legacy. When Pamuk completed his first novel 'Cevdet Bey and Sons' ('Mr. Cevdet and His Sons' in English), his father was confident that one day his son would receive a Nobel Prize. But he didn't remain alive to actually see his receive it one day.

Pamuk mentions in his lecture:

"A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is: when I speak of writing, what comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or literary tradition, it is a person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and alone, turns inward; amid its shadows, he builds a new world with words. This man – or this woman – may use a typewriter, profit from the ease of a computer, or write with a pen on paper, as I have done for 30 years...As I sit at my table, for days, months, years, slowly adding new words to the empty page, I feel as if I am creating a new world, as if I am bringing into being that other person inside me, in the same way someone might build a bridge or a dome, stone by stone. The stones we writers use are words."

So you see this is the creative process. And you have had it from the horse's mouth itself!

P.S.I hope to add more information about him soon.

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