Photo Gallery At Home with Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel-prize winning author, talks about the success of his latest book, "A Strangeness in My Mind," the "crippled" state of Turkish politics and the January terrorist attack in Istanbul, which he could hear from his apartment.
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A little over 10 years ago, Nobel-prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk was charged with "insulting Turkishness" after referring to the Armenian genocide in an interview. He was on the death list of extreme nationalists, as was his Armenian-Turkish friend Hrant Dink, who was shot to death in Istanbul in 2007. Now his newest novel, "A Strangeness in my Mind," has become his most successful one in Turkey to date.

Foto: Charlotte Schmitz/ DER SPIEGEL
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The view from Orhan Pamuk's apartment. "This is where I sat," he says, placing his hands on a small, round wooden table in front of the window. "It was a peaceful day, I had just completed my new novel and was writing an article -- and suddenly: boom! I knew right away that it was a bomb attack. You know, this used to happen every day before, in the 1970s. I know the sound of a bomb exploding."

Foto: Charlotte Schmitz/ DER SPIEGEL
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Pamuk in Santiago de Chile in 2011. "I have the Nobel Prize, so I can say what I please," he says now. But his country is in such bad shape, he explains, "and I don't want to comment on everything every day."

Foto: Felipe Trueba/ picture alliance / dpa
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The cordoned off area where an Islamic State suicide bomber blew himself up in the Sultanahmet district of Istanbul on Jan. 12, killing 11 people. "The media report on IS far too much. This fuels hysteria and panic, which is part of the problem," Pamuk says.

Foto: Matthew Aslett/ dpa
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Mourners gather at the site of the suicide bombing in Istanbul. "Bombs are a normal occurrence for us," Pamuk says.

Foto: Peter Kneffel/ picture alliance / dpa
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A view of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, better known as the Blue Mosque, following the suicide bombing. The apartment of Orhan Pamuk is in the Cihangir district, only a few kilometers from the site of the attack.

Foto: Lefteris Pitarakis/ AP/dpa