Orhan Pamuk's Nobel Prize

My immediate reaction, like that of many others, was a predictable, "Are you kidding?!" As much as I love Orhan Pamuk's work (who can fault My Name is Red, or his autobiographical Istanbul), my gut feeling was that this had to be the most politically motivated Nobel award of recent years.

Pamuk was the first author in the Muslim world to publicly condemn the 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie

Pamuk faced prosecution in Turkey for "insulting Turkishness" The charges against him sparked widespread protest, particularly from the European Union which Turkey wants to join. The cases were dropped earlier this year.

Pamuk has also been outspoken about, "the confusion about political Islam and religious Islam ... Political Islam abuses religious Islam in a totally scandalous way, employing terrorism. Religious Islam, like other great civilizing religions, is a peaceful thing."

But all this does tend to detract his wonderful genius as a writer. My name is Red is definitely up there on my all time best books list. (I sent out for a hardback from Amazon after reading the paperback. I couldn't get a first edition.)

He would have, surely, won it one day. Congratulations Orhan Pamuk