internationalist Bitch

The Fiction Bitch - aka the Tart of Fiction, which do you like better? - has posted a vivid account of going to hear a talk by Murat Belge, a writer from Istanbul who is also the publisher of Orhan Pamuk. If you're reading this and you don't know who Orhan Pamuk is, he just won the Nobel Prize for literature - just months after having charges against him, of "insulting Turkishness", dropped, after a huge international outcry against the trial (he was quite calm, at least in the press). I'll be saying more about this issue, trust me, but in the mean time please go and read the Bitch's post!

As it happens, this is a holding piece. I think that what I'm thinking about is bigger than a blog post, anyway. Robert McCrum hit some of it in his excellent article in today's Observer - up till I read that I'd been feeling disappointed with the press coverage since the Nobel was announced, which seemed mostly to be either cynical English "it's just a political award" (as if that were a bad thing) or, frankly, just more interested in the Booker.

The Bitch points out in her piece how tragic it is that none of her fellow Mancunian writers seemed to feel the need to go see Belge speak, even given the fortuitous timing. Are we that parochial? (answer below)


(answer: yes)