Art history buffs would like My Name is Red, which addresses Islamic miniatures and book arts. For example, for readers interested in travelogues and memoir, Istanbul is a good introduction into late Ottoman and Turkish modernity, and the writer’s place in that history.
Pamuk’s a multifaceted writer who likes to mix genres, so there are a few good first reads depending on interest. What would you recommend as an entry point to his work? At Duke, I teach a seminar on his novels, which are insightful windows onto Turkey, its culture, history, and politics. I translated one of his well-known novels, My Name is Red, and have written a book on the cultural politics of his fiction. I first met him when I was in graduate school and we’ve been friends for the last twenty years. Pamuk’s work is one of the foci of my research and scholarship. How important has his writing been to your work? His novels provide readers with comparative contexts for understanding characters in crisis – and themselves.
He is one of the few writers able to comment on issues of historical and political import through characters who live what might be termed an intimate geopolitics that transforms them and enlightens the reader about their daily lives. Pamuk’s importance as a writer is that he makes issues of present-day concern such as a military coup or an epidemic the basis of literary form. What makes Pamuk such an important figure? In this Q&A, Göknar discusses the work of Pamuk, who won a Nobel Prize for literature in 2006, and his impending visit to Duke. “As an author-intellectual, he’s able to provide important comparative insights into our present moment for example, the ways in which an epidemic can transform our political reality.” “Pamuk is one of the foremost practitioners of the global novel writing today and as such his visit is significant to Duke’s vision of international education,” Göknar said. Göknar translated Pamuk’s 2001 novel, My Name Is Red, into English and teaches a class about his work. Thursday at White Lecture Hall on East Campus. The event takes place from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Pamuk will discuss Nights of Plague with Erdağ Göknar, an associate professor of Turkish in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke. Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish author and Nobel laureate who has spent a long literary career making the political personal, brings his perspective to Duke Thursday for a reading from his latest novel.
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