LiteraTurca Podcast

This conversation took place on April 18, 2025, over Zoom during the 5th year and 26th session of the Turkish Literature in Translation Reading Group.

I spoke to Burhan Sönmez, the current President of PEN International, about his novel Lovers of Franz K (Other Press, 2025), originally written and published in Kurdish in 2024, before appearing in English and Turkish translation.

Sönmez is a novelist, human rights advocate, and a teacher at the university of Cambridge. Born in Haymana, Turkey and of Kurdish origin, he is the author of several award-winning novels translated into 48 languages in total. He joined me from Cambridge, England, while I was in Austin, Texas. We were joined by forty-two virtual participants who attended this meeting.

Our discussion focuses on Lovers of Franz K, its writing and translation process, and the experience of publishing in Kurdish. We also talked about his literary influences such as Gabriel García Márquez, William Blake, and Kazuo Ishiguro, the contemporary publishing industry, and the unequal circulation of books between different parts of the world and so on. The conversation also addressed multilingualism, writing across languages, Turkish-Kurdish language politics past and present, and the state of Kurdish literature in Turkey and beyond.

In this episode, I am chatting with Nefise and Karol about their recent translation: Refik Halit Karay's Stories of Exile (Gurbet Hikâyeleri, 1940). Published in October 2022 by TranslationAttached, this is a priceless collaborative work that helps make Karay accessible in English.

Today is the 28th of February 2023 and in this episode, I'm conversing with Maureen Freely about the novel she recently translated-Sevgi Soysal's Dawn (Archipelago Books: Nov 2022). She is in Warwick and I'm in Austin. The episode also features reflections of Funda Soysal and Duygu Dalyanoğlu.

In this episode, we host Matthew Chovanec, the translator of Barış Bıçakçı’s The Mosquito Bite Author. We talk about Turkish "dude lit" and masculinity crisis, analyze the vain male figure's survival strategies, and look at how the novel deals with the trials of privileged man-boys. 

This episode is devoted to the Turkish writer Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar who was born in Istanbul in 1901. I am conversing with Erdağ Göknar, who is an associate Professor of Turkish Studies at Duke University and an award-winning translator. Dr. Göknar translated Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red, Atiq Rahmi’s Earth and Ashes and finally Tanpınar’s A Mind at Peace [Huzur, 1948].

At first glance, A Mind at Peace looks like a historical novel and a love story set in Istanbul on the eve of WWII. The cosmopolitan protagonist Mümtaz is caught between Ottoman tradition and Turkish modernity as he longs for reunion with his beloved Nuran. He takes refuge in the fading Ottoman past, immersing himself in literature and music, but he is forced to confront the challenges of the everyday world and impending war.

In our conversation, we try to go beyond the mainstream interpretations of this novel and zoom into some overlooked aspects in Huzur, such as Tanpınar’s specific word choices, the Christian imagery he draws on, the messianic descriptions of the character called Suat, and the problematics of translating Tanpınaresque sentences into English.

A Talk with Dr. Aron Aji

A Talk with Dr. Aron Aji

Intro