Abstract
In Novel Dialogue's second episode, critic and scholar Bruce Robbins sits down with Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk. They have taught classes on the political novel together at Columbia for years, and it shows. They ask how the novel can ever escape its roots in middle-class sensibility and perspective: Joseph Conrad comes up, and so does modern Brazilian film. Then they discuss the demonic appeal of Russian novels-and why retired military officers produced so many great Turkish translations of Russian novels. We hear tantalizing details about Pamuk's forthcoming pandemic novel, Nights of Plague. He discusses his move away from "highbrow ironical postmodernist" fiction and reveals his affection for talking about politics-along with his distaste for what the consequences of speaking out may be. "I am not shy about talking-but there are consequences!"