As folks might be aware, Turkish author Orhan Pamuk has picked up the Nobel Prize for literature ... a post at Open Democracy makes an interesting comment on one of Pamuk's earlier works (Istanbul):

But Istanbul is also a justification for Pamuk's profound decision to become a writer who writes in the same family building in which he grew up.

Ours is the age of migration. To stay or to leave is the question that dominates adolescence. Often it expands to a choice of country - or more often the dream of that choice. The pain, necessities and consequences of migration have become one of the great themes of the literature of our time. Never more explicitly than in The Satanic Verses.

Alas, that novel is not famous for its commanding theme and Salman Rushdie's insistence on its long history. Should we back Lucretius or Ovid, he has his characters ask. Do you break from yourself by leaving the boundaries of your birth, or is moving a vital act of freedom that leads to the discovery of who you are? To stay, or to go, and what then happens?

... this is the first I've read of any potential ClassCon in Parnuk's works (the only name that sticks in my skull from the couple of reviews I've read of Istanbul was Flaubert) ... will have to make a trip to Chapters, I suspect ...