On Pamuk

Over at the Nation, Maria Margaronis has an excellent piece of commentary on Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel award:

“Pamuk’s Nobel: Deciphering the Code of Silence in Ankara,” read the headline in the Turkish tabloid Hurriyet–a title that could refer equally to a postmodernist reading of Orhan Pamuk’s work, an account of intrigues among Ottoman pashas or a news story about the Turkish president’s failure to congratulate the laureate. Since the Turkish novelist won the Nobel Prize for Literature, life has strangely come to resemble one of his fictions. On the day the prize was announced the French national assembly passed a bill making it an offense to deny the Armenian genocide, so that a person can now be prosecuted in France for denying something that it is a crime to assert in Turkey.

You can read it all here. In other news, the Literary Saloon reports that Pamuk has cancelled his appearance at the University of Minnesota, where he was due to give the Ohanessian lecture.