Orhan Pamuk reads Vladimir Nabokov's "My Russian Education" and discusses it with The New Yorker's fiction editor, Deborah Treisman.
This is the New Yorker fiction podcast from the New Yorker magazine.
I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker.
Each month we invite a writer to choose a story from the magazine's archives to read and discuss.
This month we're going to hear a piece by Vladimir Nabokov called my russian education.
My father was indeed a very active man, but I viewed his activities through a prism of my own.
The story was chosen by the turkish novelist Orhan Pamukhdev, who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2006.
His books in English include the novel Snow and the memoir Istanbul, Memories of a City.
The english translation of his most recent novel, the Museum of Innocence, will be released later this month.
He joins us from a studio in Boston.
Hi, Orhan.
Hi, Deborah.
So what made you want to do a Nabokov piece for the podcast?
Well, this is from speak memory, which I love so much, and there are so many little personal things that make me remember this story.
This is less about russian education, more about russian father, actually, father's books, waking up early and doing homework before going to school, hurrying, seeing father, worrying about father's health.
This kind of thing is so familiar to me that this stayed with me.
And their writing here is so beautiful as well.
There are typical nabokovian writing, paying attention to visual detail as well as humor, precision of the language, and an all embracing tenderness that not only goes to father, but to the whole universe that I like.
It's interesting, when I was reading your new novel, the Museum of Innocence, I thought a little bit of Lolita, of Nabokov's Lolita, in the sense that it has the same story of a forbidden longing that takes place over years and years.
Probably I will have anxiety of influence about Nabaco all of my life.
And it's okay, I accept it that I have learned so much from Nabakov that that's why I also choose to do something from speak memory or my russian education.