Pamuk’s New Life

I grew up in Istanbul … among society people. I wanted to be like the Europeans. I couldn’t see how I could reconcile my becoming a European with a God who required women to wrap themselves in scarves.

Turkey is made in such a way that the country’s culture is also made of two spirits not essentially fighting with each other but trying to find ways of combining. . . . In that sense, I’m slightly schizophrenic, slightly.

I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.

–Orhan Pamuk, Yeni Hayat (The New Life)(1995)(the opening of the book)