ORHAN PAMUK, WORLD-RENOWNED TURKISH AUTHOR, WILL GIVE LECTURE AND OPEN CLASS AT BARD COLLEGE IN OCTOBER On October 5 Pamuk will speak about “Melancholy Tristesse: Landscape of Istanbul”; on October 13 the public can join Pamuk and Norman

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.—Orhan Pamuk, the world-renowned Turkish author, will speak at Bard College as part of Norman Manea’s series “Contemporary Masters: Terror and Beauty” on Tuesday, October 5. His free public lecture, “Melancholy Tristesse: Landscape of Istanbul,” will begin at 7:00 p.m. in the multipurpose room of the Bertelsmann Campus Center. On Wednesday, October 13, the public is invited to an open class with Pamuk and Norman Manea’s students in which issues raised in his recent novel, Snow, will be discussed. This program will begin at 4:00 p.m. in room 115 of the Olin Language Center.
Snow, Orhan Pamuk’s most recent novel, is “a major work . . . conscience-ridden and carefully wrought, tonic in its scope, candor, and humor . . . entirely contemporary . . . with suspense at every dimpled vortex,” according to John Updike, writing in The New Yorker. “Pamuk is gifted with a light, absurdist touch. In Turkey, to write with honest complexity about such matters as head scarves and religious belief takes courage.”
Snow is the story of a Turkish poet, Ka, who returns from political exile in Germany to live in Kars, a remote provincial Turkish town. A series of suicides by young women in the town triggers political and ethnic debate. “Not only an engrossing feat of tale-spinning, but essential reading for our times,” wrote Margaret Atwood in the New York Times Book Review. “Snow is eerily prescient, both in its analyses of fundamentalist attitudes and in the nature of the repression and rage and conspiracies and violence it depicts.” “His books deal with the conflict between Western culture and Eastern, Islamic culture,” explains noted exiled Romanian writer Norman Manea, Francis Flournoy Professor in European Studies and Culture at Bard. “This topic is at the core of many of today’s political events, such as terrorism and the war in Iraq. His books are extremely interesting, both culturally and politically. It is excellent that the students and community have this chance to study, listen, and learn from him and his writing. As always, they can understand much more from good literature than from newspapers or television.” One of Europe’s most prominent novelists, Pamuk is also the author of My Name is Red (which won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), Silent House, The White Castle, The New Life, The Black Book, and Mr. Cevdet and His Sons. His work has been translated into more than 20 languages. Pamuk lives in Istanbul. The “Contemporary Masters: Terror and Beauty” course will also offer a public talk on November 22, “Ancient Tragedy and Contemporary Literature,” by Albanian writer Ismail Kadare. Visiting writer in residence at Bard and nominee for a Nobel Prize in literature, Kadare is the author of Elegy for Kosovo; Spring Flower, Spring Frost; The Three-Arched Bridge; The Pyramid; The Concert at the End of the Winter; and Broken April. This program is also free and open to the public and will begin at 7:00 p.m. in room 102 of the F. W. Olin Humanities Building. For further information, call 845-758-6822. # # # (9/7/04)

This event was last updated on 10-14-2004

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