Turkey’s Nobel laureate writer, Orhan Pamuk, has been chosen as the recipient of Macedonia’s international literary award, “Tabernakul.”

Pamuk was awarded a sculpture made by Goran Stamenkov, 5,000 euros in prize money and a golden coin featuring his name.

At a press conference held at the Macedonian National Theater before the award ceremony, Pamuk said he had finished working on his latest novel, “Kafamda Bir Tuhaflık” (Peculiarity in My Mind), and that the new novel would hit shelves in the near future.

Touching on politics in Turkey, he said writers were free to work in their field in the country but added that they encountered problems when expressing views on topics other than literature.

Claiming that journalists were under pressure in Turkey, Pamuk said: “If you write, you can get in trouble and be excluded from society. The pressure is higher on journalists and those who provide information to society... Let me say that freedom of thought is in very bad situation in my country, but it was not better in the past either.”

The award committee board consisted of Ferid Muhic, Goran Stefanovski, Venko Andonovski, Cvetan Vrazivirski and last year’s Tabernakul laureates, Milan Kundera and Ljubivoje Rsumovic.

Russian writer Victor Erofeyev was named as this year’s other recipient. His work often contains pastiches of Dostoyevsky’s work and themes.

Erofeyev became a literary critic, publishing works on Lev Shestov and the Marquis de Sade. He later organized his own literary magazine, Metropol, in which many of the big names of Soviet literature were involved. Erofeyev was subsequently expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers and was banned from being published until 1988 as part of the Glasnost reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev.

Hurriyet Daily News