Orhan Pamuk

Born in Istanbul on 7 June 1952, Orhan Pamuk built a body of work that includes The White Castle, The Black Book, My Name Is Red, and Snow. My Name Is Red swept major prizes: the 2002 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, the 2002 Premio Grinzane Cavour, and the 2003 International Dublin Literary Award. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006. That same willingness to address Turkey's contentious past — he publicly acknowledged the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire — drew a lawsuit in 2005; the case was initially dismissed, but in 2011 he was ordered to pay 6,000 liras for insulting hono…