Turkish novelist and Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk is NOT dead!
After a self-proclaimed hoax account created by Italian journalist Tommasso Debenedetti tweeted that Orhan Pamuk has died at the age of 66 and that the official announcement will be made soon, many people on Twitter started condoling his death.
Although the tweet has now been deleted and the account suspended, it had garnered 52 retweets hardly within 45 minutes.
The account was a parody of an independent publishing company based in Istanbul, İletişim Yayınları which has published Orhan Pamuk in the past. When The Quint reached out to them to verify the news, they replied, “It is not our account but a fake account that had been spreading such rumours. The account is suspended.”
Kashmiri journalist and author Basharat Peer also debunked the rumour and tweeted, “Somebody has been spreading rumors about Orhan Pamuk’s death. He is in Istanbul. I just saw him. He is perfectly fine. (sic)”
Many others on Twitter also pointed out that the news was being shared by a fake account created barely 24 hours ago.
Pamuk, awarded Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006, has authored books like ‘The Red-Haired Woman’, ‘The Museum of Innocence’ and ‘Snow’ among others. Best known for works that probe Turkish identity and history, his books have also been translated in various languages.
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