Tanpınar festival focuses on ‘City, Fear”

ISTANBUL

The literature festival also commemorates Turkish author Ahmet Hamdi Tapınar.

The fourth annual Tanpınar Literature Festival will be held in four cities, with the theme “City and Fear.” The festival will begin Oct. 1-4 in Istanbul, and then will continue Oct. 4-7 in Ankara, İzmir and Hatay. The festival will include thematic readings, interactive literature projects, a Professional Meeting Fellowship Program, children’s literature activities and literature parties.

The theme of this year’s Tanpınar Festival is “City and Fear,” and the concept of fear will be addressed in numerous activities.

The concept of fear in literature, as well as treatments of personal fears and common fears growing out of public and political conflicts, will be discussed. The festival produces a book each year, and this year’s edition will ask festival authors to write about the last time they were afraid of something. Sixty-eight authors from 20 different countries will be hosted in Istanbul, İzmir, Ankara and Hatay in the first week of October.

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, for whom the festival is named, was the author of such famous novels as “A Mind at Peace,” “Song in Mahur,” “Waiting in the Wings,” “The Institute of Synchronized Clocks,” and “Woman in the Moon.”

His novels have been translated into thirty languages, including French, Russian, German, English, Chinese, Persian, Bulgarian and Greek. Ned Beauman, who won the U.K. Writers’ Guild Award for his first novel “Boxer Beetle,” will be a keynote guest of the festival.