Orhan Pamuk Reading

Last night went to a reading/interview with the Turkish Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk. Fairly strict security precautions, no bags or jackets allowed into the hall. He was interviewed by Bas Heijne who started the evening by saying that much as he was delighted to be sitting where he was, he would have preferred to have been sitting in the audience and seeing Michael Zeeman doing the interview. (Note for non-Dutch readers, Zeeman died very recently.) Pamuk added that he'd been shocked by Zeeman's death and that he'd met him many times in the past and thought of him as one of the most intelligent men he had ever met.
Anyway, Orhan Pamuk didn't really need anyone else on stage. He was clearly used to running his own promotional show. After the short introductory remarks he jumped up from the table where he and his 'interviewer' were sitting saying something about how he was here to tell us about his latest book and would read a short extract in Turkish 'to give us some of the feeling of the book'. Which he did. There were a few scattered Turkish nationals in the mainly Dutch audience but the majority of us didn't understand a word of it of course. Luckily he kept it short. This was followed by a slightly longer reading of the same bit in the Dutch translation. Afterwards he went on to tell some more about the book (The Museum of Innocence) in English. Which is about infatuation and the passing of Time. A professor in love with a shop girl. The trivia of the years he spent feeding his obsession with her. Watching tv in the company of her family in the years from 1976 to 1984, when there was only one tv station in Turkey. Main thing that came out of this evening for me is a desire to visit Istanbul towards the end of next year, when the real museum, which is currently being set up with all the 'objects' from the book, is realised. I've always had a vague plan to go there one day since the day in early 1984 when I was in a bus station in Athens and could just as easily have bought a ticket to Istanbul as to wherever it was in France I did actually go to that time.