Yasar Kemal - Writer

Photo: Turkishtime

Yasar Kemal was born in 1923 in the village of Hemite in Adana. When he was in secondary school, he became interested in Anatolaian folk literature, which led him to make compilations of folklore. His poetry was published in Görüşler Magazine, a publication of Adana Halkevi (Community Center).

After leaving school during the third year of secondary school, he took up a great variety of jobs, including working as a laborer in the cotton and rice fields, teaching in a school and operating threshing machines. He also earned his living as a public letter-writer and as a librarian.

Meanwhile, his poets were being published in magazines such as Ülke, Kovan, Millet and Beşpınar. During this time, he read all the books he could lay his hands on and made friends with intellectuals who contributed to his cultural formation. He wrote his first story in 1947. He settled in Istanbul in 1951 and began to work as a reporter for the daily Cumhuriyet (Republic) newspaper. He won the annual Journalists' Association Prize for the best reporting of the year with "Seven Days in the Biggest Farm of the World".

His first book of short stories was published in 1952 under the title Yellow Heat. He then wrote his first novel, Ince Memed (Mehmet My Hawk), which was published in 1955, won the Varlık Prize for the best novel of the year and was also chosen as the best-liked novel in a one-year opinion poll among readers all over Turkey. The PEN Club International recommended the book to UNESCO, which sponsored a translatio Ince Memed was published with success.

Thirty-three volumes of stories, novels, reporting and articles were published between 1955 and 1984. Demirciler Çarşısı Cinayeti (Murder in the Ironsmiths's Market) brought him the Madaralı Novel Prize in 1974. The Literature Critics Syndicate of France selected Yer Demir Gök Bakır (Iron Earth, Copper Sky - The second of "The Wind from the Plain" trilogy) as the best foreign novel of the year. Binboğalar Efsanesi (The Legend of a Thousand Bulls) was among the books chosen in the summer of 1979 by the Great Literature Jury.

Yaşar Kemal was honored with the International Del Duca Prize in 1982 and the Légion D'Honneur Medal in 1984.
In his stories and novels, he tells of the Tauruses, the residents of the plains of Çukurova who fight for survival, the harsh landscape, and power battles between the Ağas (feudal masters / lords), which caused the villagers to suffer. Yaşar Kemal has taken the suffering and the work of these people as his main source for inspiration in his writing. He has also used the legends and stories of Anatolia extensively as the basis of his works.

The author's most prominently recognised novel Memed, My Hawk (İnce Memed) has been published in 40 languages, while his other works have been published in many languages as well. He has had over 140 editions of his work published outside of Turkey. He is an internationally-recognized and widely-read author who has also been a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

He continues to live in Istanbul and is the father of a son.

Here are some of his works published in English:
Memed, My Hawk (İnce Memed)
The Wind from the Plain (Ortadirek)
Iron Earth, Copper Sky (Yer Demir, Gök Bakır)
The Undying Grass (Ölmezotu)
Three Anatolian Legends (Üç Anadolu Efsanesi)
The Saga of a Seagull (Al Gözüm Seyreyle Salih)
Murder in the Ironsmiths Market (The Agas of Akchasaz Trilogy: Murder in the Ironsmiths Market)
To Crush the Serpent (Yılanı Öldürseler)
The Legend of the Thousand Bulls (Binboğalar Efsanesi)
Ağrıdağı Efsanesi (The Legend of Mount Ararat)

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• Yasar Kemal

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