Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul in 1952 and grew up in a large family similar to those which he describes in his novels Cevdet Bey and His Sons and The Black Book, in the district of Nisantasi. As he writes in his autobiographical book Istanbul, from his childhood until the age of 22 he devoted himself largely to painting and dreamed of becoming an artist. After graduating from the American Robert College in Istanbul, he studied architecture at Istanbul Technical University for three years, but abandoned the course when he gave up his ambition to become an architect and artist. He went on to graduate in journalism from Istanbul University, but never worked as a journalist. At the age of 23 Pamuk decided to become a novelist, and giving up everything else retreated into his flat and began to write.

His first novel Cevdet Bey and His Sons was published seven years later in 1982. The novel is the story of three generations of a wealthy Istanbul family living in Nisantasi, Pamuk's own home district. The novel was awarded both the Orhan Kemal and Milliyet literary prizes. The following year Pamuk published his novel The Silent House, which in French translation won the 1991 Prix de la découverte européene. The White Castle (1985) about the frictions and friendship between a Venetian slave and an Ottoman scholar was published in English and many other languages from 1990 onwards, bringing Pamuk his first international fame. The same year Pamuk went to America, where he was a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York from 1985 to 1988. It was there that he wrote most of his novel The Black Book, in which the streets, past, chemistry and texture of Istanbul are described through the story of a lawyer seeking his missing wife. This novel was published in Turkey in 1990, and in French translation won the Prix France Culture. The Black Book enlarged Pamuk's fame both in Turkey and internationally as an author at once popular and experimental, and able to write about past and present with the same intensity. In 1991 Pamuk's daughter Rüya was born. That year saw the production of a film Hidden Face, whose script by Pamuk was based on a one-page story in The Black Book.

His novel The New Life, about young university students influenced by a mysterious book, was published in Turkey in 1994 and became one of the most widely read books in Turkish literature. My Name Is Red, about Ottoman and Persian artists and their ways of seeing and portraying the non-western world, told through a love story and family story, was published in 1998. This novel won the French Prix Du Meilleur Livre Etranger, the Italian Grinzane Cavour (2002) and the International IMPAC Dublin literary award (2003). Snow, which he describes as 'my first and last political novel,' was published in 2002. In this book set in the small city of Kars in northeastern Turkey he experimented with a new type of 'political novel,' telling the story of violence and tension between political Islamists, soldiers, secularists, and Kurdish and Turkish nationalists. In 1999 a selection of his articles on literature and culture written for newspapers and magazines in Turkey and abroad, together with a selection of writings from his private notebooks, was published under the title Other Colours.

Pamuk's most recent book, Istanbul, is a poetical work, combining the author's early memoirs up to the age of 22, and an essay about the city of Istanbul, illustrated with photographs from his own album, and pictures by western painters and Turkish photographers.

Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006. The press release read "who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the class and interlacing of cultures."

http://www.orhanpamuk.net/

Sponsored by the Mediterranean Studies Forum, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies' S.T. Lee Lecture, the Division of International Comparative & Area Studies, the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, and the Forum on Contemporary Europe.

CDDRL Director and political science Professor Michael McFaul gave the 2007 Class Day lecture on Saturday, June 16. More than 6,000 Stanford graduates, family members, faculty, and alumni attended the lecture.

One of the world's greatest ethical challenges is the inequities in global health. Life expectancy in the United States is about 80 years and rising, while in many parts of the developing world, particularly in Africa as a result of HIV/AIDS, it is 40 years and falling. On the "bright side," the globalization of life sciences is key force to improve health in the developing world. For example, the rise of the Indian biotechnology industry has improved availability of vaccines and programs like the Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provide hope for upstream discovery science against global health problems. However, on the "dark side," the globalization of life sciences poses risks to global biosecurity including bioterrorism by non-state actors.

This lecture will explore how to optimize the benefits of the "bright side," and mitigate the risks of the "dark side," of the globalization of life sciences. Dr. Singer will argue that the biological case is different from the nuclear case and demands a different approach, and explore the potential role of the United Nations in enhancing global biosecurity.

Peter A. Singer is senior scientist at the McLaughlin Rotman Centre, University Health Network; professor of medicine, University of Toronto; co-director of the Canadian Program in Genomics and Global Health; and a distinguished investigator of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. He studied internal medicine at the University of Toronto, medical ethics at the University of Chicago, public health at Yale University, and management at Harvard Business School. Between 1995 and 2006, Singer was Sun Life Financial Chair in Bioethics, director of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto.