Writers & poets
Nâzım Hikmet
Türkiye's best known modern poet, whose free verse is read around the world.
The Turkish encyclopedia
Writers & poets
Poets and novelists who made modern Turkish literature, with what to read first — in translation, and later in the original.
7 pages in this category.
Writers & poets
Orhan Pamuk
Novelist of İstanbul and winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Writers & poets
Yaşar Kemal
The storyteller of the Çukurova plain and author of İnce Memed.
Writers & poets
Sabahattin Ali
Author of Madonna in a Fur Coat, a quiet love story that became a modern classic.
Writers & poets
Elif Şafak
A widely translated novelist writing in both Turkish and English.
Writers & poets
Aziz Nesin
The great satirist, whose thousands of stories laugh at bureaucracy and bad luck.
Writers & poets
Orhan Veli Kanık
The poet who brought everyday speech into Turkish verse.
Questions
Which Turkish writer won the Nobel Prize?
Orhan Pamuk, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006. My Name Is Red and Snow are the usual entry points in English, and his museum-novel The Museum of Innocence has an actual museum in Istanbul to go with it.
Where should a learner start reading in Turkish?
Short poems first, because they are complete in a few lines: Orhan Veli is written in plain speech and rewards a dictionary. Sabahattin Ali's Kürk Mantolu Madonna is the novel most often given to learners, for its calm, unhurried sentences.
Does Turkish poetry rhyme?
Folk poetry does, in syllabic metre meant to be sung. Modern poetry largely does not: the Garip movement around Orhan Veli threw out rhyme and ornament in the 1940s in favour of everyday speech, and most Turkish poetry since has followed.