Submerged in his new novel, Turkey's Nobel prize laureate Orhan Pamuk gazes out over the city of Istanbul, the main protagonist of his books, keeping a troubled eye over the development of his country.
Pamuk, author of best-selling modern classics including the "My Name is Red" and "The Museum of Innocence", has for some three decades been the face of modern Turkish literature at home and aborad.
His novels, translated into dozens of languages, won him the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature -- but also the sometimes unwelcome status as the moral voice of a fast changing nation.
Receiving Agence France-Presse for an interview at his Istanbul apartment overlooking the Bosphorus, Pamuk made clear he wanted to be seen as a novelist and not reduced to a secular opponent of Islamic-rooted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
"Not only (do) I have to manoeuvre myself to fight with the government but I also have to hear people's demands," he told AFP.
"In a way, anyone who is in trouble or feels that the government is not doing well for them wants me to rightfully represent their problems".
"My (Nobel) prize didn't make my life easy but of course I'm happy to deal with all these problems."
Compared to "generations of writers" in Turkey who were jailed, exiled or even killed, "I feel myself very lucky," he said.
He expressed discomfort with media interviews, saying that after discussing literature for half an hour and politics for 20 minutes what is ultimately broadcast is one minute of literature and 20 minutes of politics.
Sitting behind a desk piled high with books, Pamuk's view takes in almost two millenia of Byzantine and Ottoman history in Istanbul -- the Golden Horn, the Ayasofya and the Blue Mosque.
Taking pains to speak in precise and accurate English, Pamuk said his last published novel, "A Strangeness in My Mind", was an attempt to show a changing Istanbul through the eyes of one character.
The story is about a street vendor who sells items including boza, a traditional drink made from fermented wheat "that people enjoy at night and associated with Ottomanness, Turkishness and romantic dreams of Ottoman life.
"On the other hand, my character... Shows the reader how this city -- street by street, shop by shop, window by window -- changes."
When the book begins in the 1970s, Istanbul's population was just two million, but now it is up to 16 million, he noted.
