Turkey reacted with a mixture of pride and cynicism on Thursday to the awarding of the Nobel prize for literature to Orhan Pamuk, the country’s most controversial novelist.

In literary and academic circles the announcement that Mr Pamuk had become the first Turkish person ever to win a Nobel prize was greeted with joy. “He is a representative of modern Turkey,” said Cengiz Aktar, an academic in Istanbul. “He will probably now become the conscience of modern Turkey.”