One of Turkeys most outspoken scribbling sons, 2006 Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk arrives to spin the sad tale of the Queen of Cities, Istanbul. This controversial novelist turns the pen on himself in his first memoir, Istanbul, Memories of a City, with his trademark lyrical nostalgia for a golden age that predeceased his birth. Though the city bears 2,000 years of tumultuous and illustrious history, Pamuk regrets that the modern world has forgotten the Byzantium/Nova Roma/Constantinople of old. At odds with his wistfulness for the olden days, Pamuks refusal to keep silent on the subject of Turkeys culpability in the Armenian genocide has earned him boos and hisses at home, but won him the advocacy of fellow author-perpetually-in-hot-water Salman Rushdie. Make your own impression of the man behind the debate at a reading hosted by Seattle Arts & Lectures.
Mon., Oct. 15, 7:30 p.m., 2007
