Born in Istanbul on June 7, 1952. (A diverse group of people share this birthday - Nikki Giovanni, Anna Kournikova, Prince, me - though of this quintet only Pamuk and I were born in the same year.)

Primarily a novelist, the Nobel Prize winner is also the author of Istanbul: Memories and the City, a beautiful memoir and an evocative hymn to, and lament for, his hometown. "For me it has always been a city of ruins and of end-of-empire melancholy," he writes. "I've spent my life either battling with this melancholy or (like all Instanbullus) making it my own."