Burhan Sönmez

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Burhan Sönmez - Frankfurt Book Fair 2017

Burhan Sönmez (born 1965 in Haymana , Turkey ) is a Kurdish-Turkish writer and human rights lawyer.

Life

Sönmez grew up in Haymana, 70 kilometers south of the Turkish capital Ankara . His mother, a talented storyteller, made him interested in education and literature. He completed a law degree and graduated with a bachelor's degree . He then worked as a lawyer in Istanbul for several years .

In 1996 he was the victim of violence by the Turkish police. With the help of the British non-governmental organization Freedom from Torture , he was able to receive medical treatment and nursing home in London.

He is co-founder of the socially and culturally committed organization TAKSAV, a member of the International Society for Human Rights and the Turkish PEN Türkiye Merkezi as well as the British PEN authors' association.

Sönmez taught literature and creative writing at Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi (ODTÜ) in Ankara. He also wrote for independent left-wing newspapers such as BirGün and L'Unità as well as for magazines such as Birikim and Notos on literature, culture and politics. He was a member of the jury for the Cevdet Kudret Literature Prize in 2014.

In 2009 his first novel, Kuzey ( North ) was published. It is the story of a young man whose father disappeared when he was only two years old. Twenty years later he reappears as a corpse. He heads north to find out the secret of his lost father, whom he never really knew. Two years later, the second novel Masumlar (English: Sins and Innocents ) followed. It tells the semi-autobiographical story of a man and a woman whose lives lead from Anatolia to Tehran and Cambridge . In Turkey, the book received the prestigious Sedat Simavi Prize in the literature category. It was published in translations in English (Sins & Innocents, Garnet Publishing), Italian (Gli Innocenti, Del Vecchio) and Serbian (Nevini, Evro Giunti).

The third novel, Istanbul Istanbul, is about four prisoners in Istanbul's basement prisons. They tell each other stories in order to survive their misery. The metropolis on the Bosporus itself is, as the book title suggests, the focal point of these narratives, which are intertwined by the framework plot. This third book has been licensed in a number of countries including OR Books in New York City .

The author lives in Istanbul and Cambridge.

Works

  • Kuzey , Roman (2009),
  • Masumlar , Roman (2011)
  • Istanbul Istanbul , Roman (2015)

Awards

  • 2011: Sedat Simavi Prize in the literature category for Masumlar ( Sins and Innocents )
  • 2017: Vaclav Havel Library Foundation's “Disturbing the Peace” Award
  • 2018: EBRD Literature Prize, together with the translator Ümit Hussein, for Istanbul Istanbul

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b c Author Burhan Sönmez: Turkey not left to anti-democratic politics , Deutsche Welle from July 18, 2016, accessed July 22, 2016
  2. ↑ Taksav Istanbul About us ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed July 22, 2016  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / ist.taksav.org
  3. ↑ “Sins and Innocents”, by Burhan Sönmez , long interview with Sönmez about the biographical references in Sins and Innocents , accessed July 22, 2016
  4. ^ I libri di Burhan Sönmez , author profile Sönmez at Del Vecchio Editore, accessed July 23, 2016
  5. ↑ Istanbul Istanbul A novel , orbooks.com, accessed July 22, 2016
  6. ↑ Salil Tripathi: Turkish Novelist Burhan Sönmez to Recieve the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation's “Disturbing the Peace” Award , vhlf.org, September 6, 2017, accessed on September 29, 2017.
  7. ↑ Istanbul Istanbul wins EBRD Literature Prize 2018 , ebrd.com, April 10, 2018, accessed on April 11, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Sönmez, Burhan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Turkish writer and lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH 1965
PLACE OF BIRTH Haymana , Turkey