Nedim Gursel

Nedim Gürsel has been described by Yashar Kemal as ‘one of the few contemporary Turkish writers who have brought something new to our literature.’ Born in Gaziantep, Turkey, in 1951, Gürsel was forced - after the coup d’état in 1971 - to testify in court over one of his articles, which lead to his temporarily exile in France, where he studied at the Sorbonne. Gürsel then returned to Turkey, but the military putsch of 1980 sent him back into exile in France. He was awarded the Prize of the Academy of Turkish Linguistics and Literature for his first major prose work, A Long Summer in Istanbul (1975), which has been translated into several languages. In 1986, his novel La Première Femme received the Ipeçki Prize for its contribution to conciliation between the Greek and Turkish peoples. His autobiography Au Pays des Poissons Captifs was recently published simultaneously in France and Turkey. The Conqueror is his first novel to be translated into English, published by Talisman, New York.