No India setting for Orhan Pamuk's books

He loves coming to India and also has an Indian girlfriend but Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk has no immediate plans to set his future works in the country.

"I will stay in Turkey, more so in Istanbul. I prefer to write about Turkey only," the 58-year-old Turkish writer said during an interaction programme in the capital last evening to launch his new book The Naive and The Sentimental Novelist, published by Penguin India.

Pamuk, the author of Snow, My Name is Red, The Museum of Innocence and other works was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. His latest book is a collection of literary essays from the Charels Eliot Norton lectures he delivered at Harvard in 2009.

The author who has previously acknowledged Booker winner Indian writer Kiran Desai as his companion and dedicated his new book to her did not want to speak much about their relationship.

When asked about what his true love was Pamuk responded with a grin, "I have secrets too but there are some secrets that everybody knows."  The interviewer pointed to Desai and said, "The secret is sitting in the first row."

Meanwhile, in his just released book of essays Pamuk draws on German poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller's famous distinctinon between "naive" poets -who write spontaneoulsy, unselconsiously - and sentimental poets: those who are reflective, emotional, questioning and alive to the artifice of the written word.

"I argue in my book that a good novelist is both naive and sentimental at the same time.  Reading is looking at words and imaginging them. A reader constantly converting words into images while reading a novel. But each picture is different for every reader," said Pamuk, who wrote his essays in Goa, Istanbul, Venice, Greece and New York.

Describing himself as a voracious reader he said he had between the age of 18 and 30 completely dedicated himself to work of authors ranging from Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust, Mann and Naipaul.

The author who was educated in private schools in Istanbul studied architecture before enrolling in a journalism course and the life of a writer.

He briefly dabbled with painting, the expercience which helped him develop his ideas on the visual aspects of narration in My name is Red.

Pamuk, who has courted political trouble for his opinions and trouble from his family members for potraying them in stories, said he likes the concept of doubles.

"I like and care about the concept of doubles. Our characters are not as strong as in a book. They are not permanently defined and change form. I do not like to told that there is only one Orhan, and in my novels I like to explore two characters in the same individual," said Pamuk.

Refusing to be drawn into a discussion over which of his books he loved the most he said, "I prefer to rather talk about the books that I don't like. I think my novel The New Life (1997) has been  my worst book till now. Suddenly I started hating it."

Among all his books he finds Black Book published in 1990 to be his most intriguing. "Black Book is the voice where I found my true inner voice. Unfortunately it is not enjoyed by many."

Ultimately, the Nobel laureate said," Novels are second lives. Like dreams, the novels reveal the colours and complexties of our lives and are ful of people, faces and objects we feel we recognise.

"Just as in some dreams, we want the novel we are reading to continue and hope that this second life will keep evoking in us a consistent sense of reality and authenticity."