Kemal Tahir
Kemal Tahir (March 13, 1910 - April 21, 1973) was a prominent Turkish novelist and intellectual. Tahir spent 13 years of his life imprisoned due to political reasons and wrote some of his most important novels during this time.
His most important novels include Esir Şehrin İnsanları (1956), Devlet Ana (1967) and Yorgun Savaşçı (1965), all in which Tahir uses historical background to support his characters and settings. Some of his novels were adapted into popular films. Tahir also wrote pulp fiction under pseudonyms for financial reasons.
Biography
Kemal Tahir was born on March 13, 1910. His father Tahir Bey was a navy captain and an adviser to Sultan Abdulhamit II. After graduating from Hasan Paşa Rüşdiyesi (secondary school), Kemal Tahir enrolled to Galatasaray High School. But after his mother's death, he dropped out high school at 10th grade and began working as a lawyer's clerk, and later as a journalist. He worked as a journalist, editor and a translator at Vakit, Haber and Son Posta newspapers in İstanbul. He worked as a page editor at Karikatür and Yeni Gün newspapers. He became lead writer for the newspaper Karagöz and later worked as the editor-in-chief at Tan. He married Fatma İrfan in 1937.