How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another's heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known? Even if the world's rich and powerful were to put themselves in the shoes of the rest, how much would they really understand the wretched millions suffering around them? So it is when Orhan the novelist peers into the dark corners of his poet friend's difficult and painful life: How much can he really see?

Pamuk's lawyer Haluk İnanıcı subsequently confirmed that charges had been dropped. The novel blends mystery romance and philosophical puzzles in a setting of 16th century Istanbul. Personal life

Pamuk's elder brother Şevket Pamuk who sometimes appears as a fictional character in Orhan Pamuk's work is a professor of economics internationally recognised for his work in history of economics of the Ottoman Empire working at Bogazici University in Istanbul.

As well as the Nobel Prize in Literature (the first Nobel Prize to be awarded to a Turkish citizen) Pamuk is the recipient of numerous other literary awards. One of Turkey's most prominent novelists his work has sold over eleven million books in sixty languages making him the country's best-selling writer. Ferit Orhan Pamuk (generally known simply as Orhan Pamuk; born 7 June 1952) is a Turkish novelist screenwriter academic and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature.