Birth of Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk was born on 7 June 1952 in Istanbul. A Turkish novelist, Pamuk was born in Istanbul, trained briefly as an architect and then turned to writing. His novels, including The White Castle, My Name Is Red, Snow and The Museum of Innocence, deal with identity, the clash and mingling of East and West and the memory of the Ottoman past. His memoir Istanbul: Memories and the City is a portrait of the city of his childhood. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006. In 2005 he was prosecuted for insulting Turkishness after remarks about the mass killing of Armenians and Kurds, though the charges were dropped. He also opened a real museum in Istanbul based on his novel.

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