Pamuk Tour Back On

"We are delighted that Orhan Pamuk is prepared so soon already to carry out the visit cancelled on short notice in February," a spokeswoman for Carl Hanser Publishing said.

Christina Knecht told reporters that the writer had always intended to meet his commitments at some point. "Nothing has really changed; he always said the tour was never completely off. Now he's suggested May, and we're delighted that we were able to find new dates with the organizers fairly quickly," she said.

"He cancelled the tour without giving any reason, but I think it was really more about the situation in Turkey, and that he was being pursued for weeks there," Knecht said, adding that as far as she knew, Pamuk was probably in the United States now.

Tour allegedly abandoned over fears for life

German newspapers had said the writer called off the trip because he feared for his life after the murder in January of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul, but Pamuk did not confirm the reports.

Dink is believed to have been killed by ultra-nationalists in revenge for remarks he made about the massacre of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire.

Pamuk, the author of "Snow" and other novels mulling Turkey's identity and the clash between Muslim and Western culture, has angered Turkish authorities with similar remarks.

Dink and Pamuk were both prosecuted under laws restricting
freedom of expression in Turkey, which wants to join the EU.

No stranger to controversy

Pamuk was tried for insulting "Turkishness" after telling a Swiss magazine that 30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians had been killed during World War I under the Ottoman Turks, but the case was dropped on a technicality.

Pamuk's tour of Germany will begin in Hamburg on May 2 and will also take in Berlin, Cologne, Munich and Stuttgart. He will receive an honorary doctorate from Berlin's Free University on May 4. The author enjoys a large following in Germany which is home to about 2.5 million people of Turkish descent.