Orhan Pamuk and the Good of World Literature by Gloria Fisk (review)

[...]Western readers who approach writers like Pamuk "come to him to learn the truth about distant people and places, notwithstanding the obvious fact that he traffics in fiction" (17). In being exiled by his own nation-state for his political position while also being recognized as a distinguished writer of world literature by the Nobel Committee, Pamuk takes on the role of the "persecuted exile" who ultimately "becomes reducible to a fictional character who elicits a ready identification, and his suffering is emptied of historical content as it is honored symbolically to an exaggerated degree" (127). Fisk situates textual analysis in relation to sociopolitical critique; she suggests that we cannot fully construe the current problematics of world literature without closely reading both Pamuk's fiction and the performative persona developed through his own political engagement in Turkey, by international organizations such as the Nobel Committee, and by Western readers who buy his work in translation.