It was exactly the sort of thing which might happen to somebody in one of Orhan Pamuk's novels. "The mosque," the genial Turkish novelist had said, by way of giving directions, "is right opposite my building." On the phone from Dublin this sounded reasonable enough. In the sort of Istanbul side street which sports a wall of cars parked along either side, just enough space for a single vehicle to dash at a merciless speed up the middle (where are all the learner drivers in Istanbul, the cautious, the uncertain, the 30-mile-an hour pensioners in Morris Minors? Dead, probably) and periodic lunatic honkings when the path is blocked by a rickety delivery van, it was a different proposition altogether. There was a tumble of tall buildings and the usual collection of tiny shops, goods overflowing on to the pavement, but no mosque.
Still, the street was right, the address was right and the intercom, when pressed, yielded a cheery invitation to take the lift and come on up. And suddenly there it was; dome floating lazily against the steely Bosphorus, minarets soaring up into the rain, and that magical, ramshackle skyline flung out, as if by a careless genie, as far as the eye could see on either side. Given that this is the view from the office where he writes every day from 10 in the morning until seven at night, it's hardly surprising that in his novels, Orhan Pamuk appears to see into Istanbul's very soul.
A boyish forty-something with impeccable English - the product of three years of "not doing anything, actually" as a visiting scholar in Iowa - an apparently inexhaustible supply of herbal tea and an impressive library housed in marvellous glass-fronted bookcases, Pamuk has received considerable acclaim from reviewers in both Europe and America for his edgy, clever fictions, which have been compared to those of Umberto Eco, Salman Rushdie and, most persistently, Jorge Luis Borges.
Three of his novels have been translated into English: The White Castle, a fable about the exchange of identities between a 17th-century Ottoman savant and his Italian slave; The Black Book, an exuberant box of literary tricks in which the story of an Istanbul man's search for his missing wife is interwoven, in alternative chapters, with the provocative, eclectic newspaper columns written by his journalist uncle; and The New Life, which sees a university student take off on a series of bus journeys across Anatolia after he reads a mysterious, life-changing book. "A new star has arisen in the east," declared the New York Times of The White Castle, while the New Statesman concluded that "The Black Book is what writing is for."
Are the comparisons with Borges flattering, or annoying? He grins ruefully. "Of course, at some point it's annoying for any writer to be compared to another writer - but there is some truth to the comparisons in that I have been sort of inspired by some of the things that he did." An even broader grin. "But mainly Borges despised novelists. I sometimes wonder if it's to do with the translation . . . " Translation is a sticky subject for Pamuk, who admits to having recently "divorced" the English translator of The Black Book and The New Life, a Turkish-American novelist named Guneli Gun. His books have been translated into 20 languages including Bulgarian, Russian, and - the strangest, he says - Persian. "Some five years ago a guy called me, a Persian married to a Turk, and told me he had translated my book." There had been so much censorship in Iran up to that point that publication of new books had dwindled to almost nothing, and in an attempt to rectify the situation the Minister for Culture announced his intention to produce a list of "politically correct" books for translation.
"And among the male, sexless, dead, mostly English authors on his list, he recounts with relish, "there was a certain Orhan Pamuk. So they translated my book. By the time the translation was finished that Ministry of Culture had been kicked out of office for being liberal, and another four years passed. But that Minister for Culture is now the President of Iran, so . . . I'm published in Iran." Censorship in Iran is one thing, but has he experienced censorship in his native country? "Not in my novels, no. When I write articles for newspapers, I know there are limits to what I can write. But having said that, I could give you a whole list of subjects that I try to avoid. And before my first book was published I wrote a novel which I gave two years to, full-time; and there was a military coup in 1980 and it couldn't be published, so it's still in a drawer. That's censorship of a kind." Pamuk sells huge numbers of books in Turkey - The New Life was the fastest-selling novel in Turkish history, and his new book, Benim Adim Kirmizi (My Name Is Red), seems set to follow suit. But it's easy to see how his razor-sharp observations of contemporary life, delivered with devastating ironic detachment, might enrage his fellow Turks. "Yes, there are so many things that enrage them, and I'm so good at it," he agrees. "One row which has been going on for several months now is that, in The New Life, I supposedly made jokes about Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic.
I said pigeons were shitting on Ataturk's statue, and also that a poster of Ataturk was smiling ironically at people who were drinking themselves to death in a bar, and they fished that out as a pretext to attack me, very aggressively. In Turkey right now, the Islamic fundamentalists are attacking Ataturk, so a controversy arose in the popular newspapers as to whether I might be in the pay of the fundamentalists.
"Of course I'm not, and of course I don't hate Ataturk, but I'm not one of those people - and we have them in Turkey, believe me - who say `I like trees because Ataturk used to like trees too'. Now this isn't censorship either, but the next time you write about Ataturk you get self-conscious and say, OK, maybe pigeons should not shit - or next time, maybe I'll write `Dear leader, pigeons in this lovely country never shit on Ataturk's statue'."
Regular readers, at least, would get the joke. But with his record of speaking out in newspaper articles and television interviews, on the Kurdish issue in particular, has Pamuk ever felt himself to be in physical danger? "Yes, of course. When I did a publicity interview for my latest book I said that I take my daughter to school every day. But I made sure that nobody would understand which school, or which neighbourhood, or which apartment building.
"The Kurdish subject brings the highest trouble. Because I have made open political statements, not even defending the Kurds but saying, look, we can solve this problem in a democratic fashion, there's a huge resentment for all of this. But I'm a bit worried about this label `dissident author who fights for freedom'. I don't want to be seen as a `political' writer. "My subject, generally speaking, is the metaphysics of change, and human reactions to what we used to have as our identity, when the whole thing is changed. It doesn't matter whether it's east or west, or traditional or modern; you have a tradition and, for this or that reason, it's changed. I care about that. I care about what is lost."
The White Castle, The Black Book and The New Life are published by Faber & Faber.
