Orhan Pamuk

Last night we went to hear Orhan Pamuk read from his new book at the Inprint Margaret Root Brown reading series.

The book is called The Museum of Innocents, and is, of course, set in Istanbul.

While reading from the book Orhan was rather hard to understand. English is not his first language, and he really did not do justice to the beautiful prose that he writes.

But during the Q&A session he was very entertaining. He is very clever, and loves to talk. So a question would barely be out of the interviewer's mouth and he was answering it with a long and involved response. I wish I would have timed him, but I think he took at least five minutes to answer a simple question.

He frequently referred to one of his other books (Istanbul) to answer questions about his personal background, and refused to answer one question at all. (That question was about character development. He said "That is a very long answer. I think we will not answer that question")

The final question asked was "What advice do you have for young writers in the audience?" He said the is asked that a lot, and always gives the same answer:

"Don't take advice from old writers"