Burhan Sönmez

Burhan Sönmez is a Kurdish prize-winning novelist from Turkey. He is the President of PEN International, elected at the Centennial Congress in 2021.

Stone and Shadow, published in 2021, and received Orhan Kemal Novel Award in 2022, is the story of Avdo, a tombstone craftsman, whose life tells the social history of modern Turkey. His life journey gets involved with many other lives that reflects different cultural backgrounds including Christians, Sunni Muslims, Alawites, Turks, Kurds, Armenians. Avdo's story starts in the city of Mardin as an orphan. He is being protected by an Assyrian man who teaches him the art of sculpting tombstones. He travels from city to city and comes across Elif, the only love of his life, in a small Anatolian village. Avdo's dreams get shattered there when he has to kill two village men.

He was awarded the EBRD Literature Prize in London (2018) for his novel Istanbul Istanbul. Sins and Innocents has received the Sedat Simavi Literature Prize, and Stone and Shadow received the Orhan Kemal Novel Award. His novels are being published in more than forty countries such as by Gallimard (France), Other Press (USA), Random House (Germany), Nottetempo (Italy).

Labyrinth was published in 2018. It is the story of Boratin, a blues singer, who attempts suicide by jumping off the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, but opens his eyes in hospital. He loses his memory and can't remember why he wished to end his life. He remembers only things that are unrelated to himself, but confuses their time. When he sees the figurine of Jesus and the Virgin Mary he recognises them but he cannot work out whether they lived thousands of years ago or just few years ago. He knows the Ottoman Empire fell, and that the last sultan died, but has no idea when. From the confusion of his social and individual memory, he is faced with two questions. The first is related to the body. Does physical recognition provide a sense of identity? The second question concerns the mind. Which is more liberating for a man, or a society: knowing the past, or forgetting it? Labyrinth, embroidered with Borgesian micro-stories, flows smoothly on the surface while traversing sharp bends beneath the current.

He received "Disturbing the Peace" award given by Vaclav Havel Library Foundation in New York (2017).

His third novel, Istanbul Istanbul, was published in 2015. It is the story of four prisoners in the underground cells in Istanbul. When they are not being subjected to torture, the four tell one another stories about Istanbul to pass the time. The underground narrative gradually turns into the narrative of the above ground. Initially centered around persons, the novel comes to focus on the city of Istanbul. There is as much suffering or hope in the Istanbul above ground as there is in the cells underground.

He has written for various newspapers and magazines like The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, La Repubblica. He translated the poetry book of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake into Turkish. He was a member of judging panel for 2014 Cevdet Kudret Literature Prize and for 2020 Geneva International Film Festival. He lectured in Literature and Novel at the [https://www.metu.edu.tr/ METU.

His second novel, Sins and Innocents, published in 2011 and received the Sedat Simavi Literature Prize that is a prominent literature award in Turkey. It tells a story of two people whose paths come across on a foreign land. A woman carries a "book" and believes in poetry. A man, suffering from insomnia, struggles to survive through graves. Each of them has got a secret and a sin. On the day they meet the woman reads his fortune in the "book" and he sings the songs of desert. Sins and Innocents tells the story of two people whose lives have been running through Haymana Plain, Tehran and Cambridge ...

Sönmez is the author of five novels. His first novel, North (Kuzey), was published in 2009 in Turkey. His second novel, Sins and Innocents (Masumlar), was published in 2011. His third novel, Istanbul Istanbul, was published in 2015. Labyrinth, his fourth novel, got published in 2018. His last novel is Stone and Shadow, published in 2021.

Burhan Sönmez is a dual Turkish/British national. He was born in Turkey. He grew up speaking Turkish and Kurdish, then later moved to Istanbul where he worked for a time as a lawyer. He was member of Human Rights Society (IHD) and a founder of TAKSAV (Foundation for Social Research, Culture and Art). He was among founders of daily BirGün, an opposition newspaper. He was seriously injured following an assault by police in 1996 in Turkey and received treatment in Britain for a long period of time (with the support of the Freedom from Torture.)

The story opens in the 1980s, during the times of military coup, in Istanbul. The story-line constantly shifts between the past and future. Alongside the contemporary period, the story of different times like Ottoman era, and of different places in the Middle East and Europe eventually creates an encompassing historical map of many different societies. By moving from one scene to another, the story collects all fragments one by one to form a whole picture in the end.