Continual Wonder. Colors and travels near and far in the works of Orhan Pamuk

Abstract

Orhan Pamuk, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, is one of the most interesting and versatile of contemporary writers whose prose contributes to the understanding of the cultural background of the Orient and the Occident forged out of the juxtaposition of Islam and Christianity. As a might-have-been artist, who is currently an amateur photographer, the author, in an uncommon way, visualizes the continual wonder towards colors in the surrounding reality featuring in his fictional and non-fictional texts. The most important aspects of Pamuk’s works, however, are the journeys near and far and those within oneself, as well as the wanderings through cities, especially those of his native Istanbul. Aside from the returns home and to the motherland, Pamuk contrasts the inspiring voyages out with the voyages into the collective and individual past, in all their historical and political complexity. The present paper is an overview of Orhan Pamuk’s works from the perspective of colors and the aforesaid passages, which remind his readers of travelling as a basic topos of the course of human existence.