SOURCE: Pamuk, Orhan, and Judy Stone. “Orhan Pamuk: ‘Enigma Is Sovereign.’” Publishers Weekly 241, no. 51 (19 December 1994): 36-7.

In the following interview, Pamuk discusses his writing career, the critical reception of his novels in Turkey, and his views on Turkish politics.

Orhan Pamuk is nothing if not ambitious. All he wanted to do in his new novel, The Black Book, he says, was to write a huge, richly textured narrative that would capture the schizophrenic angst of Istanbul, a city in a country straddling two continents. He thus joined the search for an answer to the perennial Turkish question he defines as: “Are we European? Or are we Asian?”

Earlier in his career, with his third novel, The White Castle (Braziller, 1991) Pamuk had merged two themes: a culture in the mysterious process of change; and men in the mysterious process of changing identity. These themes emerge again in The Black...