Yaşar Kemal
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Yaşar Kemal (born Kemal Sadık Gökçeli) is one of the best known writers in Turkey. He was born in 1923 in Hemite (now Gökçedam), a hamlet in the province of Osmaniye in southern Turkey. His parents were poor Kurdish emigrants from Van.[1] [2]. Kemal had a traumatic childhood. He also lost one eye at an accident when his father was slaughtering a sheep on Eid al-Adha. He witnessed his father getting killed while he was praying in Mosque. Long after this unfortunate experience, he started school in a neighboring village when he was nine and he continued his formal education in Kadirli.
According to a book-length epistolary interview,[3] before he started school Kemal was a locally noted bard, but was unappreciated by his widowed mother until he composed an elegy on the death of one of her eight brothers, all bandits. However, he forgot it and became interested in literacy as a means to record his work when he questioned an itinerant peddler who was doing his accounts. Ultimately his village paid his way to university in Istanbul.
In his colorful account, he worked for a while for rich farmers, guarding their river water against other farmers' unauthorized irrigation. However, instead he taught the poor farmers how to steal the water undetected, by taking it as night. Later he worked as a letter-writer, then as a journalist, and finally as a novelist. He claims that the Turkish police took his first two novels.
In these letters Kemal assesses his own importance in to Turkish literature as considerable. He claims to have recreated Turkish as a literary language, by bringing in the vernacular, following Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's sterilization of Turkish by removing foreign (Persian and Arabic) elements.
His first book of short stories Sarı Sıcak (Yellow Heat) was published in 1952. He was immediately noticed with the publication of İnce Memed (Memed, My Hawk) in 1955. Probably the most famous living writer in Turkey, Kemal is noted for his command of the language and lyrical description of bucolic Turkish life. As an outspoken intellectual, he does not hesitate to speak on sensitive issues such as the plight of the Kurds in the Southeastern Turkey.
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Bibliography
Stories
- Sarı Sıcak, (Yellow Heat) 1952
Novels
- İnce Memed (Memed, My Hawk) (1955)
- Teneke (The Drumming-Out) (1955)
- Orta Direk (The Wind from the Plain) (1960)
- Yer Demir Gök Bakır (Iron Earth, Copper Sky) (1963)
- Ölmez Otu (The Undying Grass) (1968)
- Akçasazın Ağaları/Demirciler Çarşısı Cinayeti (The Agas of Akchasaz Trilogy /Murder in the Ironsmiths Market) (1974)
- Akçasazın Ağaları/Yusufcuk Yusuf (The Agas of Akchasaz Trilogy / Yusuf, Little Yusuf) (1975)
- Yılanı Öldürseler (To Crush the Serpent) (1976)
- Al Gözüm Seyreyle Salih (The Saga of a Seagull) (1976)
- Allahın Askerleri (God’s Soldiers) (1978)
- Kuşlar da Gitti (The Birds Have Also Gone: Long Stories) (1978)
- Deniz Küstü (The Sea-Crossed Fisherman) (1978)
- Hüyükteki Nar Ağacı (The pomegranate on the Knoll) (1982)
- Yağmurcuk Kuşu/Kimsecik I (Kimsecik I - Little Nobody I) (1980)
- Kale Kapısı/Kimsecik II (Kimsecik II - Little Nobody II)(1985)
- Kanın Sesi/Kimsecik III (Kimsecik III - Little Nobody III) (1991)
- Fırat Suyu Kan Akıyor Baksana(Look, the Firat River is Flowing with Blood) (1997)
- Karıncanın Su İçtiği (Ant Drinking Water) (2002)
- Tanyeri Horozları (The Cocks of Dawn) (2002)
Epic Novels
- Üç Anadolu Efsanesi (Three Anatolian Legends) (1967)
- Ağrıdağı Efsanesi (The Legend of Mount Ararat) (1970)
- Binboğalar Efsanesi (The Legend of the Thousand Bulls) (1971)
- Çakırcalı Efe* (The Life Stories of the Famous Bandit Çakircali) (1972)
Reportages
- Yanan Ormanlarda 50 Gün (Fifty Days in the Burning Forests) (1955)
- Çukurova Yana Yana (While Çukurova Burns) (1955)
- Peribacaları (The Fairy Chimneys) (1957)
- Bu Diyar Baştan Başa (Collected reportages) (1971)
- Bir Bulut Kaynıyor (Collected reportages) (1974)
Experimental Works
- Ağıtlar (Ballads) (1943)
- Taş Çatlasa (At Most) (1961)
- Baldaki Tuz (The Salt in the Honey) (1959-74 newspaper articles)
- Gökyüzü Mavi Kaldı (The Sky remained Blue) (collection of folk literature in collaboration with S. Eyüboğlu)
- Ağacın Çürüğü (The rotting Tree) (Artciles and Speeches) (1980)
- Yayımlanmamış 10 Ağıt (10 Unpublished Ballads) (1985)
- Sarı Defterdekiler (Contents of the yellow notebook) (Collected Folkloric works) (1997)
- Ustadır Arı (The Expert Bee) (1995)
- Zulmün Artsın (Increase Your Oppression) (1995)
Children's Books
- Filler Sultanı ile Kırmızı Sakallı Topal Karınca (The Sultan of the Elephants and the Red-Bearded Lame Ant) (1977)
Other Awards and Distinctions
- Choix du Syndicat des Critiques Littéraires pour le meilleur roman etranger (Eté/Automne 1977) pour Terre de Fer, Ciel de Cuivre (Yer Demir, Gök Bakır).
- Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger 1978 pour L'Herbe qui ne meurt pas (Ölmez Otu); Paris, Janvier 1979.
- Prix mondial Cino Del Duca decerné pour contributions a l'humanisme moderne; Paris, Octobre 1982.
- Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur de France; Paris, 1984.
- The Sedat Simavi Foundation Award for Literature; Istanbul, Turkey, 1985.
- Doctor Honoris Causa, Strasbourg University, France, 1991.
- Doctor Honoris Causa, Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey, 1992.
- Lillian Hellman/Dashiell Hammett Award for Courage in Response to Repression, Human Rights Watch, USA, 1996.
Footnotes
- ^ http://www.bookrags.com/research/kemal-yasar-ema-03/
- ^ Günter Grass In Praise of Yasar Kemal, Boston Review 23, 2006
- ^ Yachar Kemal, entretiens avec Alain Bosquet, trans. by Eugene Lyons Hébert and Barry Tharaud as Yasar Kemal on his life and art, Syracuse 1999
