The Book Club: Orhan Pamuk

Best of the Spectator

In this week's Book Club podcast I'm joined by the Nobel Prize winning novelist Orhan Pamuk to talk about the publication of Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks. Right up to early adulthood, Orhan had imagined he was destined to be a painter, but then his life took another turn. In these illustrated notebooks he marries words and images in an elliptical sort-of diary. He tells me about what he puts in and what he leaves out, how his imagination works, the artists and writers he admires, what fame has given him, and why he wishes he didn't have to talk about politics.