The Turkish writer Yasar Kemal is dead, the winner of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade died on Saturday after a long illness
The language will save mankind.. – which the Turkish writer Yasar Kemal was convinced. “I deeply believe in the magic of language,” he wrote in Unionsverlag. “I am still convinced that the language create new universes, can destroy others.” From this power of language Kemal led the responsibility of the writer in the society. A role that he took very seriously resistance to perceived injustice and the struggle for freedom and human rights are the central theme in the work of the writer. Now Kemal has died after a long illness. He was 91 years old.
The Turks call Yasar Kemal only “usta” – perfect. With its published 1955 novel “Ince Memed” (Memed My Hawk), he became the most widely read writers of Turkey and gained worldwide fame. The novel’s protagonist, the “frail Memed”, it rebels against the rule of the landlords and attracts as a bandit in the mountains.
Probably born in 1923
Kemal arrived in South Anatolian village Gökçedam (formerly Hemile) in the province of Osmaniye, the son of a former landowner in the world. His exact birth date is unknown. The writer says that he was probably born in 1923. He was always appreciated 6 October – the day on which his father should have him officially registered with the authorities.
His parents had fled in 1915 from Eastern Anatolia against the Russian occupation and had finally settled in the Cukurova level. As a child, Kemal loses an eye in an accident. With four and a half years, he was forced to watch as his adoptive brother stabbed his father in a mosque.
“From then on I began to stutter”
Kemal is severely traumatized. Over time, he writes: “From then on I began to stutter Only when I sang the words came without resistance on my lips..” His songs earned him the nickname “Kemal the Bard” field. At about eleven years Kemal learned as an only child in the village of reading and writing and overcame his speech disorder. He worked as a street writer and wrote letters, petitions and documents.
1951 appeared his first stories in the left-nationalist newspaper “Cumhuriyet” in Istanbul. He worked for twelve years as a journalist – wrote about poverty, famine, drought and exploitation.
Overall, Kemal was in prison three times. Among other things, the writer was imprisoned in 1971 by the then military government because of his work for the Turkish Marxist Workers’ Party. As many writers of his generation were in custody, Kemal described the prison as a “school of Turkish contemporary literature”.
Because “sedition” suspended sentence
Kemal, himself a Kurd, has criticized the Kurdish politics of his country again and again. In 1996, he was sentenced to a prison term of one year and eight months on probation for “incitement”. Because he feared assassination of right-wing extremists, he lived for a time in Sweden, before returning to Istanbul.
His last novel entitled “Tek Bir Kus Kanatli” (“bird with only one wing”) appeared Therein Kemal dealt with the fear that poisoned the Company in September 2013.
With many international literary awards
Kemal was awarded many international literary awards and in 1972 became the first Turkish writer nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Günter Grass said in 1997 in his speech at the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade to Kemal: “In Yasar Kemal’s books, the representation of racial fanaticism is indicated as an expression of official government policy why the author is the ruling annoying..”
This line remained loyal Kemal. The Gezi protests in the summer of 2013. He supported and wrote in the Italian newspaper “La Repubblica”:. “The hatred is created against freedom and democracy, is a major catastrophe in our generation and can never be forgiven What we need today is a democratic regime. ”
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