Burhan Sönmez

Burhan Sönmez is the author of five novels. His prize-winning novels have been published in more than forty languages, including French (Gallimard) and German (btb-Penguin Random House). He was born in Turkey and grew up speaking Turkish and Kurdish. He worked as a lawyer in Istanbul. He went to Britain for political reasons and lived there in exile for some ten years. He now lives in Istanbul and Cambridge. He has written for various papers like The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, and la Repubblica. He translated William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell into Turkish. He lectured in Literature at the Middle East Technical University. He is a board member of PEN-International. He received many awards including Vaclav Havel Library Award and the EBRD Literature Prize.