LIVE from the NYPL: Orhan Pamuk in Conversation with Paul Holdengräber

Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk?by turns witty, moving, and provocative?presents his criticism, autobiographical writing, and meditations alongside interviews and selections from his private notebooks in his new book, Other Colors. Written over the last three decades on his lifelong obsessions, on his own books and writing process, and on the work of others, he engages the work of such novelists as Laurence Sterne and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Salman Rushdie and Patricia Highsmith. We learn not only how he writes but also how he lives as he recounts his successful struggle to quit smoking and describes his relationship with his daughter. Ordinary events?applying for a passport, the death of a relative?inspire extraordinary flights of association as Pamuk reflects on everything from the child?s state of being to romantic versus parental love to divergent attitudes toward art in the East and West.

About Orhan Pamuk

Born in Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk is the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature for 2006. At the age of 23 Pamuk decided to become a novelist, and giving up everything else retreated into his flat and began to write. He has been writing for over 30 years and his works include Cevdet Bey and His Sons, The Silent House, The White Castle, The Black Book, The New Life, and the autobiographical book, Istanbul. From the mid-1990s Pamuk took a critical stance towards the Turkish state in articles about human rights and freedom of thought, although he took little interest in politics. Snow, which he describes as 'my first and last political novel,' was published in 2002. His novel My Name Is Red won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. Apart from three years in New York, Orhan Pamuk has spent all his life in the same streets and district of Istanbul, and he now lives in the building where he was raised. Other Colors: Essays and a Story is Pamuk?s first book since winning the Nobel Prize. In 2006 Orhan Pamuk became a Library Lion, the highest honor awarded by The New York Public Library.

About Paul Holdengräber

Paul Holdengräber is the Director of Public Programs?now known as "LIVE from the NYPL"?for The Research Libraries of The New York Public Library.