Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk crafts novels where miniature painters (My Name is Red), exiled poets (Snow), and lovelorn collectors (The Museum of Innocence) embody Turkey's cultural collisions. Born in Istanbul (1952), he blends detective plots with political tensions and philosophical inquiry.
A polarizing figure in his homeland, he was prosecuted for addressing Armenian genocide and Kurdish rights. Pamuk's non-fiction (Other Colors) and political commentary amplify his fiction's themes. He teaches comparative literature at Columbia University when not writing in his Maslak apartment.