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Orhan Pamuk. (credit: © Jerry Bauer)

(born June 7, 1952, Istanbul, Tur.) Turkish novelist. Raised in a Western-oriented family, he was educated in Istanbul and received a degree in journalism (1977). He published his first novel in 1982 and achieved international fame with The White Castle (1985), set in 17th-century Istanbul. He lived in the United States in the late 1980s. His works, often autobiographical and intricately plotted, probe the tensions between East and West. His later novels include My Name Is Red (1998), Snow (2002), and Masumiyet Müzesi (2008). In 2005 the Turkish government generated international controversy when it put Pamuk on trial for "denigrating Turkishness." He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006.

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