STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, who faced a criminal charge for discussing some of his country's most painful episodes, won the Nobel literature prize today for his works dealing with issues of identity and clashing cultures.

The decision drew a brief but intense round of applause when Hoarse Engdahl, head of the Swedish Academy, announced it.

A Turkish court dropped charges against Pamuk for insulting "Turkishness," ending a high-profile trial that outraged Western observers and cast doubt on Turkey's commitment to free speech.

Pamuk, 54, who gained international acclaim for books including "Snow," "Istanbul," and "My Name is Red," went on trial last year for telling a Swiss newspaper in February 2005 that Turkey was unwilling to deal with the massacre of Armenians during World War I, which Turkey insists was not a planned genocide, and recent guerrilla fighting in Turkey's overwhelmingly Kurdish southeast.

Engdahl said Pamuk was awarded the prize because he had "enlarged the roots of the contemporary novel" through his links to both Western and Eastern culture. In its citation, the academy said that "Pamuk has said that growing up, he experienced a shift from a traditional Ottoman family environment to a more Western-oriented lifestyle. He wrote about this in his first published novel ... which in the spirit of Thomas Mann follows the development of a family over three generations."

Pamuk will receive $1.4 million, a gold medal and diploma, and an invitation to a lavish banquet in Stockholm on Dec. 10.