Get Out Tonight: Orhan Pamuk @ Benaroya Hall

Although the Nobel Prize in Literature is supposed to be awarded in recognition of a writer's entire oeuvre, it's become commonplace for Nobel-watchers to attribute the award to the Swedish Academy making a political statement. Thus when Orhan Pamuk won in 2006, cynical commentators attributed it primarily to a pair of novels, Snow and The White Castle. The novels explore the interaction between the Christian West and Muslim East and the struggle between Modernity and fundamentalism, and as such, Pamuk was seen as the anti-Samuel Huntington. That explanation has never been entirely satisfying, but for the uninitiated not yet familiar with the work of this prodigiously gifted writer, this can serve as a brief introduction to the ideas that will be flying at Benaroya tonight, when Pamuk makes a much anticipated appearance as part of the Seattle Arts & Lectures series.