Background
He was born in 1899 to writer and poet İsmail Safa (1867-1901) in Istanbul, Ottoman Empire. While he was only two years old, his father died in exile in Sivas.
He was born in 1899 to writer and poet İsmail Safa (1867-1901) in Istanbul, Ottoman Empire. While he was only two years old, his father died in exile in Sivas.
During his youth years until the age of seventeen, he lived in psychic and physical depression due a bone sickness he suffered from at the age of eight or nine. He rejected his doctors" advice to amputate his arm. Safa described his experiences in hospitals in his novel Dokuzuncu Hariciye Koğuşu, which was filmed in 1967.
In 1911, Peyami Safa had to give up his education at Vefa High School, and began working in a printing house and later in the Ministry of Post.
In later years, he published three literary periodicals. He also wrote in various newspapers sometimes as a columnist, and sometimes as a novelist.
Most of his novels were created before 1940. In these novels, he stressed on the west-east conflict in the Turkish society during the early years of the Turkish Republic.
His novel Dokuzuncu Hariciye Koğuşu gained much interest.
In 1931, he wrote his only historical novel about Attila the Hun. Besides these novels, he wrote many serial stories and novels in newspapers, among tem in Cumhuriyet and Milliyet, under the pseudonym "Server Bedii". Some of these are about a gentleman thief named Cingöz Recai.
Peyami Safa was laid to rest at the Edirnekapı Martyr"s Cemetery.
He was the editor-in-chief of the daily Son Havadis as he died.