Alper H. YAĞCI
A foreign
friend of mine has recently asked me the question and I am writing this essay
as an attempt at an answer: Why is it so difficult to find a fan of Orhan Pamuk
in Turkey? We have a veritable puzzle: The man is a Nobel laureate, considered
worldwide as one of the major writers of his generation and, for that matter,
he is a best-seller in the country in question. Yet, when you ask a literate
Turk about Pamuk, the answer you are likely to hear is, “I gave up his book
after fifty pages or so.” Who is buying all those books, and why don’t we like
our only Nobel laureate?
