The White Castle, Orhan Pamuks celebrated first novel, is the tale of a young Italian scholar captured by pirates and put up for auction at the Istanbul slave market. Acquired by a brilliant Turkish inventor, he is set to work on projects to entertain the jaded Sultan. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and lives there with his family. He won the 1990 Independent Award for Foreign Fiction for The White Castle. In 1994, The New Life became the fastest-selling book in Turkish history. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006.