Orientalism In Orhan Pamuk’s White Castle

The two most well-known works of Orhan Pamuk, The White Castle and My Name is Red, are historical fiction set in the time of the Ottoman Empire. These novels represent some of the most common issues the novelist focuses on, such as the East-West binary, questions of cultural identity and differences, and possibilities of local and global co-existence. In this article, by focusing on the case of The White Castle, Pamuk’s life, his Nobel prize acceptance and his controversial statements in international press, I examine how a Turkish-born, Muslim novelist portrays Islamic history and the Ottomans predominantly for the European gaze and argue that Pamuk’s historical narrative borrows considerably from the legacy of European Orientalist writings