Yashar Kemal was born Kemal Sadik Göçeli in southwestern Turkey in the small village of Hemite near Osmaniye in the province of Adana.
Yaşar Kemal's father came from a line of feudal landlords and his mother from a family of famous brigands in eastern Anatolia.
At the age of five Yashar Kemal saw his father shot to death while praying in the mosque and, in the same incident, lost one of his eyes.
Yashar Kemal did not attend school until he was nine (walking two hours a day in order to do so) and had no formal education beyond eighth grade.
Yashar Kemal's works, which also include short stories and essays, are local in color and infused with the spirit of Turkish folk traditions.
They show the influence of world classics from Homer to Stendal, Steinbeck, and Faulkner.
The Halkevi also published his earliest folklore studies (a collection of ballads in 1942 and a study of elegies in 1943).
All of these works, as well as poems accepted by journals in the early 19406, were signed with his real name, Kamal Sadik Gögçeli.
He changed his name to Yashar Kemal when he moved to Istanbul in 1951.
Various collections of his journalistic writings and of his short stories have been published in Turkey, and English translations of some of his best short stories are available in Anatolian Tales, published in New York in 1969.
Career as Novelist It was not until he was 33 years old that he published his first novel, Ince Memed (1955; Mehmet My Hawk, 1961).
Set in the Taurus-Chukurova area that he knew so well, it tells of a young village boy who, driven to banditry through the tyranny of the local landowner, becomes a Robin Hood-like figure, an outlaw fighting against injustice, and a legend and inspiration to the villagers of the area.
Two sequels, Ince Memed 2 (1969; They Burn the Thistles, 1973) and Ince Memed 3 (1984), continue the saga of this folk hero.
Ortadirek (1960; The Wind from the Plain, 1962), Yer demir gök bakir (1963; Iron Earth, Copper Sky, 1974) and Ölmez otu (1968; The Undying Grass, 1978) form a trilogy that again deals with the ordeals of the poverty-stricken villagers in the Taurus Mountains.
Confronted by the forces of nature and the rapacity of landlords, these people survive only by an annual migration to the coastal plain to earn money picking cotton.
Set in the same milieu, the novel Akçasazin agalari centers on the problems of the landlords themselves, especially the old blood feud, and shows the effects of the breakdown of the feudal and tribal orders.
It appeared in two volumes: Demirciler çarsisi cinayeti (1974; The Lords of Akchasaz: Murder in the Ironsmiths Market, 1979) and Yusufcuk Yusuf ("Turtledove Yusuf, " 1975).
Later Yashar Kemal wrote also of underprivileged groups in other parts of Turkey.
Al gözüm seyreyle Salih (1976; Seagull, 1981) is set in a Black Sea fishing town; Deniz küstü (1978; The Sea-crossed Fisherman, 1985) and Kuslar da gitti (1978; Alors les oiseaux sont partis, 1981) take the reader to Istanbul and its environments.
Such works include Üç Anadolu Efsanesi (1967; Three Anatolian Tales, 1975), Agridag Efsanesi (1970; The Legend of Ararat, 1975), Binbogalar Efsanesi (1971; The Legend of the 1000 Bulls, 1976), and Çakicali Efe (The Swashbuckler from Chakija, 1972).
Yet he blended stark realism with scenes of epic grandeur and tempered it by the unreality of myth.
He won many awards in Turkey and abroad.
Kemal was given a suspended 20-month sentence in 1996 for speaking out against the government's actions regarding the Kurds.
Further Reading Edebiyat 5 (Nos. 1 and 2, 1980), available through the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, is a special issue devoted to Yashar Kemal.
Yaşar Kemal was the most successful and most widely known of modern Turkish novelists. His works, which also include short stories and essays, are local in color and infused with the spirit of Turkish folk traditions. They show the influence of world classics from Homer to Stendal, Steinbeck, and Faulkner.
Yashar Kemal in 1952, Yaşar Kemal married Thilda Serrero. Yasar Kemal remarried on 1 August 2002 to Ayşe Semiha Baban.
