On 12 October 2006, the Swedish Academy announced that he had been awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, confounding pundits and oddsmakers who had concluded that Syrian poet Ali Ahmad Said, known as Adunis, was most likely to receive that year's award. There were concerns within Turkey that the decision to award the Nobel Prize to Pamuk was politically motivated. In its citation, the Academy said: "In the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city, has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures."