Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk has won the 2006 Nobel Prize in literature

Göran Sommardal: My first reaction: oh this young boy! Already a winner of the Nobel Prize. I can only think of Albert Camus who I think was 46 when he received the Nobel Prize ... who was a younger winner of the prize.

And how do we describe Pamuk? Is he a Turkish writer, European writer - East and West - where is he?

Interesting enough, he is both a very Turkish and very European writer. So I think that is why we love him so much here in the West. I think also that he represents something that we would hope that every Turk possess, I mean, he is the ideal Turk. If every Turk would look like and be like and think like Orhan Pamuk, Turkey would be a member of the European Union tomorrow morning. He's able to merge the historic, and the geographic visions into one. And most of his novels are very exciting to read.

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