Orhan Pamuk at the Hay Festival Granada

The Hay Festival has been held in Granada last week for the second succesive year. Many cultural activities, most of them literary activities have been organized during the week. The festival is now over.

The most succesful activity of the festival was the conference given by Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Price of literature 2006. In spite of a few happenings, I could finally be there & hear him.

The conference began later, then it was initially to take place inside the round courtyard of the Palace of Charles V at the Alhambra, but because of the strong rain that afternoon, the organisation moved it to the Theater Isabel la Catolica, downtown...of course with a delay of 45 minutes.

...No problem, the conference was excelent, he spoke in english, I could understand him very well, I didn´t need any translating machine. I left the conference thinking I want to read all his books, he has not written many, in fact he decided to become a writer at the age of 22, but his first book was published at the age of 35, but he is so intelligent, that every book is completely different from conception, He sais it takes him many years to write every book, he allways wants to make something different, for example: Istanbul, memories and the city: more a book of his memories during his childhood & youth, just before the time he decided to become a writer instead a painter... than a book of Estambul, nobody can use the book as a guide to Estambul.

My name is Red: the story of a painter of the 15th century (he chosed this time because at that time the turkish painting & the western painting were very simmilar, small tables with many details...after the rennaisance in Europe, the painting began to be different)...Well, not only that, but the concept of the book is that it is told through different narrators, not ony one...so, different point of views... The white Castle: a book written "in the traditional Stile" of the Turkish literature... Kar (Snow): where he explains the life in the countryside & the people, but with a "touch of politics", how the islamic politics has affected to the daily life of those people...so, more actual, like a reporter (since this book, he needs permanently a bodyguard). He only writes in turkish language...& about his country...he sais it is his life & himself, it is the only thing he can write about...the other speaker on the stage said he is meanwhile the most famous novelist in the world & that we all got to know Turkey throught him, he gets nowadays millions of readers... I left the conference thinking I wanted to read all his books, he spoke of other writers he has read, writers from all over the world, & he takes the best of "their stile". so I thought it can be more or less a surprise by every book. At the end he signed some books, but the line was so long, it was meanwhile 22:30 & I was very tired from the long day, I only took a picture of him...