Latife Tekin

Latife Tekin (* 1957 in Karacefenk , Kayseri Province , Turkey ) is a Turkish writer and screenwriter .

Live and act

Biographically motivated topic: Life in the Gecekondu district in the Turkish city (here Ankara)

Latife Tekin spent her early childhood in Karacefenk, a small village in the Central Anatolian province of Kayseri. In 1966 she came to Istanbul with her family , where she grew up in a Gecekondu district. Of the seven children in her family, she was the only one to graduate from high school.

Her "torn childhood", the contrast between the folklore-rich traditions of the Anatolian village population and the primitive life in a slum- like makeshift settlement on the outskirts of the city, Tekin later dealt with in her books. After she had worked for a telephone company for a short time after attending high school, she became a freelance writer and published her debut novel Sevgili Arsız Ölüm in 1983 , which describes the life of a family who moved to Istanbul from rural areas. According to Wilpert's lexicon of world literature, this first work made "sit up and take notice" and the British The Independent later certified Tekin with a considerable gift in the field of phrasing and creation of images, referring to the novel. The book was a great success.

Tekin's follow-up work as a novelist attracted less attention because of its literary quality than mainly because of her criticism of the political conditions in her country, which she incorporated into it. Of particular interest to the reading public was that Tekin also severely criticized sectarian groups to which she had belonged in the 1970s. Her second novel, Berci Kristin Çöp Masalları'nı from 1984, became one of the most widely read books in Turkey. He addresses the creation of a gecekondu on a garbage dump in Istanbul. It is the only novel by Tekin to date that has been published as a German translation. Under the title Honigberg , the German first publication was published in 1987 by the Hamburger Verlag am Galgenberg and as a licensed paperback edition in 1993 by the Swiss Unionsverlag .

In 1984 Tekin also emerged as a film writer with a screenplay. Bir Yudum Sevgi was directed by Atıf Yılmaz . The feature film, starring actors like Kadir İnanır , received awards at the most important film festivals in Turkey.

Several of her books have now appeared as translations in various languages. Tekin's style is often associated with magical realism .

Latife Tekin lives and works as a freelance writer and screenwriter in Istanbul.

Awards

• 2005: Sedat Simavi Prize for Literature
• 2019: Erdal-Öz Literature Prize

Works (selection)

Turkish-language novels

• Sevgili Arsız Ölüm (1983)
• Berci Kristin Çöp Masalları'nı (1984)
• Gece Dersleri (1986)
• Buzdan Kılıçlar (1989)
• Aşk İşaretleri (1995)
• Ormanda Ölüm Yokmuş (2001)
• Unutma Bahçesi (2004)
• Muinar (2006)

script

• Bir Yudum Sevgi (1984)

German translations

• Honigberg . Paperback edition, Unionsverlag, Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-293-20026-5 . (License from Verlag am Galgenberg, Hamburg)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Turkish authors >> Latife Tekin , short biography on the UW Courses Web Server website of the University of Washington , USA (English; last accessed April 22, 2009).
2. ↑ ^{a b} Gero von Wilpert (Ed.): Lexicon of world literature. Foreign language authors . Special edition the 4th, completely reworked. Ed., Kröner, Stuttgart 2004, p. 1783.
3. ↑ Dear, Shameless Death by Latife Tekin, trans by Saliha Paker & Mel Kenne , review by Aamer Hussein in The Independent on July 21, 2001 (last accessed April 22, 2009).
4. ↑ See information on Latife Tekin at Unionsverlag (see web link).
5. ↑ Dr. Songül Rolffs, University of Gießen : Events in Turkish Studies in SS 2007 , >> Proseminar: Latife Tekin and her work .
6. ↑ Turkish authors in the Union Publishing House >> Latife Tekin  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Press dossier of the Zürcher Unionsverlag for the book fair 2008, p. 12. ( PDF file; 1.23 MB; last accessed: April 22, 2009).  

Web links

• Information about Latife Tekin at the Swiss Union Publishing House