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Authors by Country · TurkeyThe Best Turkish Authors to Read
Modern Turkish literature spans the last decades of the Ottoman Empire, the republic and the present, and Istanbul is never far away. Its writers range from poets and satirists to authors of village epics, modernist experiments and political novels. Several writers here were jailed, prosecuted or pushed into exile for what they wrote, and one, Orhan Pamuk, won the Nobel Prize. Each can be read in English today.
The list is ordered chronologically by year of birth, from Tanpınar and Nâzım Hikmet to writers born in the 1970s. Every author has at least one book available in English, and translators are named where known. Elif Shafak also writes in English. The starting book given for each is the most accessible way in.
Twelve Turkish authors, and where to start with each
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar
1901–1962 · Istanbul, Ottoman Empire
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar was a novelist, poet and essayist who became professor of New Turkish Literature at Istanbul University in 1939 and sat in the Turkish parliament from 1944 to 1946, despite never holding a doctorate. He wrote about Istanbul and other Turkish cities as places where several layers of history meet.
His essays in Five Cities (1946) portray Erzurum, Konya, Istanbul, Bursa and Ankara, translated by Ruth Christie (Anthem Press, 2018). Two novels are available in English: A Mind at Peace (1949) and The Time Regulation Institute (1954).
Read Tanpınar if you want a novelist steeped in Istanbul and its history.
Start with The Time Regulation Institute (1954). His best-known novel, translated by Alexander Dawe and Maureen Freely (2013); an earlier translation by Ender Gürol appeared in 2001. Or A Mind at Peace (1949). Translated by Erdağ Göknar (Archipelago Books, 2008).
Nâzım Hikmet
1902–1963 · Salonica, Ottoman Empire (now Thessaloniki, Greece)
Nâzım Hikmet is a central figure in modern Turkish poetry, and his politics shaped his life. He was imprisoned in 1933, released in 1935 and jailed again from 1938 on sentences totalling more than 28 years, serving time in Ankara, Çankırı, Bursa and Istanbul until an amnesty freed him in 1950.
He left Turkey for the Soviet Union in 1951, was stripped of his citizenship and died in Moscow in 1963; the revocation was cancelled in 2009. His main English translators are Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk.
Read Hikmet if you want political poetry written from prison and exile.
Start with Human Landscapes from My Country (1966). His long poem Memleketimden İnsan Manzaraları, written in prison during the Second World War and published in Turkish after his death; translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (Persea Books, with a foreword by Edward Hirsch).
Sait Faik Abasıyanık
1906–1954 · Adapazarı, Ottoman Empire
Sait Faik Abasıyanık wrote short stories almost exclusively. He spent most of his time on Burgazada, one of the Princes’ Islands in the Sea of Marmara, and the sea is one of the main themes of his work. The Darüşşafaka Society now maintains his Burgaz house.
He published a dozen collections between Semaver (1936) and his death in 1954. The house is now a museum, and the Sait Faik Literature Prize for the best short story collection has been awarded annually since 1954.
Read Sait Faik if you want short, atmospheric stories of Istanbul and its islands.
Start with A Useless Man (1948). Selected stories named after his 1948 collection Lüzumsuz Adam, translated by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe (Archipelago Books, 2015).
Sabahattin Ali
1907–1948 · Eğridere, Ottoman Empire (now Ardino, Bulgaria)
Sabahattin Ali was a novelist, story writer and poet whose work brought him into conflict with the authorities: his novel Kuyucaklı Yusuf (1937) was banned within months of publication, and he served time in prison. In 1948, unable to get a passport, he was killed near the Bulgarian border, most likely by the smuggler paid to help him cross.
Madonna in a Fur Coat, first serialised in 1941–42, has topped bestseller lists in Turkey and sold a record number of copies there. A Penguin edition with an introduction by David Selim Sayers followed in 2021.
Read Sabahattin Ali if you want the novel that became a modern Turkish bestseller.
Start with Madonna in a Fur Coat (1943). His best-known novel, first serialised in 48 instalments in the daily Hakikat; translated by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe for Penguin Classics (2016).
Yaşar Kemal
1923–2015 · Hemite (now Gökçedam), Osmaniye, Turkey
Yaşar Kemal (born Kemal Sadık Gökçeli) was a novelist of Kurdish descent who wrote in Turkish. He was jailed in 1950 for alleged communist activities, and as an outspoken critic of the oppression of Kurds he was tried again in 1995 and given a suspended sentence in 1996.
He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1973, largely on the strength of Memed, My Hawk, and received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1997. His fiction suits readers who like long, rooted storytelling about rural life.
Read Kemal if you want an epic of Anatolian villages and outlaws.
Start with Memed, My Hawk (1955). A boy held in near-slavery by a village landlord escapes and becomes a celebrated outlaw; translated by Edouard Roditi (NYRB Classics, 2005).
Oğuz Atay
1934–1977 · İnebolu, Kastamonu, Turkey
Oğuz Atay was an engineer who taught at what is now Yıldız Technical University in Istanbul. His first novel, Tutunamayanlar (1971–72), mixes grief, satire and humour, shifting form and point of view to examine identity, alienation and political conditions in Turkey.
He died in 1977, aged 43. Orhan Pamuk has praised his only story collection, Waiting for the Fear, for transforming the short story, and its NYRB translation (2024) has made him much easier to find in English.
Read Atay if you want playful, modernist fiction about outsiders.
Start with Waiting for the Fear (1975). Eight stories about marginal figures in absurd, unsettling situations, translated by Ralph Hubbell (NYRB Classics, 2024). Or The Disconnected (1972). Turgut Özben investigates the suicide of his friend Selim Işık; translated by Sevin Seydi (Olric Press, limited edition).
Orhan Pamuk
Born 1952 · Istanbul, Turkey
Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul, and the city runs through much of his fiction and his memoir. His novels include The White Castle (1985), Snow (2002) and The Museum of Innocence (2008), for which he also created a real Museum of Innocence in an Istanbul house.
He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006. In 2005 he was charged under Article 301 after speaking about the killing of Armenians and Kurds; the charges were dropped in 2006. His most recent novel in English is Nights of Plague (2022), translated by Ekin Oklap.
Read Pamuk if you want Istanbul at the centre of intricate, layered novels.
Start with My Name Is Red (1998). The novel that won the International Dublin Literary Award in 2003, shared with its translator Erdağ M. Göknar (English edition 2001). Or Istanbul: Memories and the City (2003). His memoir of the city, translated by Maureen Freely (2005).
Latife Tekin
Born 1957 · Karacahevenk, Kayseri, Turkey
Latife Tekin was born in a village in Kayseri province and moved with her family to Istanbul in 1966, at the age of nine. Her first novel, Dear Shameless Death (1983), depicts Anatolian village life in a fairy-tale atmosphere with elements of magical realism.
It was followed by Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills (1984) and Swords of Ice (1989). All three are published in English by Marion Boyars, which makes her early work easy to read as a sequence.
Read Tekin if you want Turkish magical realism.
Start with Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills (1984). Her second novel, published in English by Marion Boyars. Or Dear Shameless Death (1983). Her debut, a novel of Anatolian village life with elements of magical realism (Marion Boyars, 2001).
Burhan Sönmez
Born 1965 · Haymana, near Ankara, Turkey; lives in Britain
Burhan Sönmez grew up speaking Turkish and Kurdish. After being badly injured in an attack by Turkish police in 1996 he left Turkey and settled in Britain, where he received treatment with the support of Freedom from Torture; he is now a dual Turkish-British national.
His novels include Labyrinth (2018) and Stone and Shadow (2021), and in 2024 he wrote Lovers of Franz K. in Kurdish. He has been president of PEN International since 2021.
Read Sönmez if you want Istanbul through the stories of political prisoners.
Start with Istanbul Istanbul (2015). Four prisoners in cells beneath Istanbul tell each other stories about the city while waiting to be tortured; translated by Ümit Hussein (Telegram, 2016) and winner of the first EBRD Literature Prize. Or Stone and Shadow (2021). Avdo, a tombstone craftsman, lives through the social history of modern Turkey; winner of the Orhan Kemal Novel Award.
Aslı Erdoğan
Born 1967 · Istanbul, Turkey; lives in Germany
Aslı Erdoğan worked as a particle physicist at CERN from 1991 to 1993 before becoming a full-time writer in 1996. She is also a human rights activist, and sat on the advisory board of the pro-Kurdish newspaper Özgür Gündem.
In August 2016 she was detained in a police raid on the paper and held for four months before release pending trial. She left for Germany in 2017. She received the Simone de Beauvoir Prize in 2018.
Read Erdoğan if you want literary fiction from a writer who has faced prison for her words.
Start with The City in Crimson Cloak (1998). Her novel Kırmızı Pelerinli Kent, translated by Amy Spangler (Soft Skull Press, 2007). Or The Stone Building and Other Places. Short prose translated by Sevinç Türkkan (City Lights).
Elif Shafak
Born 1971 · Strasbourg, France; lives in London
Elif Shafak is a Turkish-British novelist who writes in both Turkish and English. Born in Strasbourg, she has lived in London since 2013. In 2006 she was prosecuted for “insulting Turkishness” under Article 301 over The Bastard of Istanbul, for its treatment of the Armenian genocide, and was acquitted that September.
The Forty Rules of Love (Turkish 2009, English 2010) followed, and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2019. Her more recent novels include The Island of Missing Trees (2021) and There Are Rivers in the Sky (2024).
Read Shafak if you want novels that confront Turkey’s difficult histories.
Start with The Bastard of Istanbul (2006). A novel that touches on the Armenian genocide and led to her trial under Article 301; English edition 2007. Or 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (2019). Her novel shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2019.
All Elif Shafak books →Hakan Günday
Born 1976 · Rhodes, Greece
Hakan Günday was born on the Greek island of Rhodes. The Few (Az, 2011) was named the best novel in Turkey that year, and More (Daha, 2013) won the French Prix Médicis étranger in 2015.
His fiction does not look away. More, narrated by the son of a people smuggler, deals with migrants moved through Turkey towards Greece and depicts brutal cruelty, so it suits readers prepared for hard material.
Read Günday if you want a disturbing contemporary novel about migration and complicity.
Start with More (2013). Gaza, a boy who loves chess and books, grows up helping his father smuggle migrants through Turkey towards Greece; translated by Zeynep Beler (Arcade, 2016).
Which Turkish author should you read first?
The best starting point depends on what you want from a book.
- For Istanbul in a novel — Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red (1998)
- For satire — Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, The Time Regulation Institute (1954)
- For a love story — Sabahattin Ali, Madonna in a Fur Coat (1943)
- For an Anatolian epic — Yaşar Kemal, Memed, My Hawk (1955)
- For short stories — Oğuz Atay, Waiting for the Fear (1975)
- For a contemporary novel — Burhan Sönmez, Istanbul Istanbul (2015)
Where to go next
Frequently asked questions
Who is the most famous Turkish author?
Orhan Pamuk is the best-known internationally; he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006. In Turkey, the poet Nâzım Hikmet and novelist Yaşar Kemal are equally central.
What is a good first Turkish novel to read?
Sabahattin Ali’s Madonna in a Fur Coat (1943) is short and was a record-selling bestseller in Turkey; Pamuk’s My Name Is Red suits readers who want a longer historical mystery.
Which Turkish writers have been prosecuted for their work?
Nâzım Hikmet spent years in prison, Yaşar Kemal was tried in the 1990s, Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak were charged under Article 301, and Aslı Erdoğan was detained in 2016.
Who translates Turkish literature into English?
Maureen Freely has translated Pamuk, Tanpınar, Sait Faik and Sabahattin Ali, often with Alexander Dawe; other translators include Erdağ Göknar, Ekin Oklap, Ümit Hussein and Ralph Hubbell.
Does Elif Shafak write in Turkish or English?
Both. She is a Turkish-British writer who has lived in London since 2013, and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2019.
Are there Turkish short story writers in English?
Yes: Sait Faik Abasıyanık’s A Useless Man (Archipelago, 2015) and Oğuz Atay’s Waiting for the Fear (NYRB Classics, 2024).
Start with the author whose questions interest you most. The book you remember longest may not be the one with the clearest answers, but the one that changes how you see something familiar.
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