Burhan Sönmez
Burhan Sönmez is the author of seven novels. A recipient of the Hemingway Prize, the Vaclav Havel Award and EBRD Literature Prize, his novels have been published in fifty three languages. He is president of PEN International and a Senior Member of Hughes Hall College and Trinity College, University of Cambridge. He was born in Turkey to a Kurdish family. He worked as a lawyer in Istanbul before coming to Britain for political reasons and living here in exile for several years. He has been on the judging panel of various events, including the Inge Feltrinelli Prize and Geneva International Film Festival, and has written for press such as
La Repubblica,
Der Spiegel and
The Guardian. He has translated
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake into Turkish. Having written five novels in Turkish, he began to write in his mother tongue, Kurdish, with his sixth novel,
Lovers of Franz K.
“Sönmez playfully expands Kafka’s world in a literary experiment that encourages readers to reimagine the unfinished work of their heroes.” Natalie Perman, Financial Times
“There’s a Kafkaesque quality to the interrogation – but Kurdish author Sönmez is really interested in the question of who owns literature. Was Brod right to publish? Would Kafka be unknown if he hadn’t? The dialogue-led approach makes the book punchy...” John Self, The Guardian
“With echoes of Borges and Dostoevsky, Lovers of Franz K is more than a literary psychological thriller - it is a creative resurrection; a metafictional kaleidoscope where Poe meets Kafka. Literary rebel Sönmez does not just pay homage to Kafka - he enacts it.” BookBlast
Burhan Sönmez image credit: © Roberto Gandola