Book Talk / Orhan Pamuk Secularism and Blasphemy/The Politics of the Turkish Novel

Prof. Erdag Goknar's Orhan Pamuk, Secularism and Blasphemy-The Politics of the Turkish Novel is the first critical study of all of Pamuk¿s novels, including the early untranslated work. In 2005 Orhan Pamuk was charged with "insulting Turkishness" under Article 301 of the Turkish penal code. Eighteen months later he was awarded the Nobel Prize. After decades of criticism for wielding a depoliticized pen, Pamuk was cast as a dissident through his trial, an event that underscored his transformation from national literateur to global author. By contextualizing Pamuk¿s fiction into the Turkish tradition and by defining the literary and political intersections of his work, Orhan Pamuk, Secularism and Blasphemy rereads Pamuk's dissidence as a factor of the form of his novels.