Imagine World-defining Power of Political Story

and then — that’s it. Just imagine!

Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk gave an impassioned political speech yesterday at Georgetown University.
. . . Pamuk talked of the “literary globalization of the world” and outlined the way the novelist’s imagination — when employed to evoke “the other, the stranger, the enemy that resonates inside each of our heads” — can be a powerful, liberating force.

. . .[E]voking “the other” is — by Pamuk’s definition — an inherently political act. . . readers, like the author himself, try to imagine ‘the other’ — they are putting themselves in another’s place.”
By the end of this vision, Pamuk said, he sees his novel readers as “an entire nation . . . imagining itself into being.” .