Yasar Kemal on His Life and Art

For more than four decades Yasar Kemal has been Turkey’s greatest and best-known writer. His works have been translated into every major language, and he has been short-listed several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1957 Kemal became friends with the French writer Alain Bosquet, and much later the idea for a “conversation in correspondence” between the two writers developed. The “conversation,” which is really a series of questions by Bosquet that are answered at length by Kemal, was published in Paris by Gallimard in 1990. In this work Kemal describes his life, including the political persecution he experienced for his leftist politics, the development of his literary art, and the influences that have played a significant role in his life. His account of how Turkish and Kurdish oral epic traditions influenced his work is significant, for it marks Kemal as the preeminent figure in modern world literature who combines literary traditions of East and West, poetry and prose, and folk and classical styles.