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| Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk wins Nobel | | |
Stockholm | Thursday, 12 October
Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, who has clashed with his country's government and was taken to court for ''insulting Turkishness,'' won the Nobel literature prize on Thursday for his multitude of works that deal with the symbols of clashing cultures.
The decision, which surprised few, drew a brief but intense round of applause when Horace Engdahl, head of the Swedish Academy, announced the name.
The Swedish Academy said that that the 54-year-old Istanbul-born Pamuk ''in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures.''
A Turkish court dropped charges against Pamuk in January, ending a high-profile trial that outraged Western observers and cast doubt on Turkey's commitment to free speech.
Pamuk went on trial for telling a Swiss newspaper in February 2005 that Turkey was unwilling to deal with two of the most painful episodes in recent Turkish history: the massacre of Armenians during World War I, which Turkey insists was not a planned genocide, and recent guerrilla fighting in Turkey's overwhelmingly Kurdish southeast.
''Thirty-thousand Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands, and nobody but me dares to talk about it,'' he said in the interview.
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