Key facts on Orhan Pamuk

Oct 12 (Reuters) Here are some key facts on Orhan Pamuk who won the Nobel Prize for Literature today.

* In December last year Turkey's most famous novelist Orhan Pamuk went on trial for insulting ''Turkishness''. His case was later dropped on a technicality.

* The case was brought against him by a state prosecutor in Istanbul for ''insulting Turkish identity'' under article 301 of the criminal code after he talked about the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians during World War One and the deaths of 30,000 Kurds in recent years.

* Born in Istanbul in 1952 to a wealthy family, Pamuk abandoned studying to be an architect to write his first book, but struggled to find a publisher.

* His novels, translated into dozens of languages, include ''My Name is Red'', ''Snow'' and ''The White Castle''. The novels deal with the clash between past and present, East and West, secularism and Islamism, often against the colourful backdrop of his native Istanbul.

* He has said he had never sought political controversy, but being a Turk and living most of his life in Turkey means that ''my political observations are about Turkey, because that's what I know. I never asked for a political role ... it just happened to me.'' * Pamuk, 54, won the prestigious Peace Prize of Germany's book trade association, Germany's highest literary honour, in 2005.

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