Influential Turkish author to meet her fans

ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency

Latife Tekin. Radikal photo, Muhsin AKGÜN

Turkey’s renowned author Latife Tekin is set to meet her readers at the Istanbul Modern Museum where she will speak about her books and upcoming projects.

Tekin is one of the most influential Turkish female authors. In 1983, her famous novel “Sevgili Arsız Ölüm” (Dear Shameless Death) was published. The magic realism in the book was drawn from Anatolian folklore and traditions. Tekin’s childhood in Kayseri, a multicultural city at a central point in Anatolia, influenced both her first book and the others in this aspect. She was born in 1957 in Kayseri, Turkey and educated in Istanbul.

Tekin first came to the fore in 1983 with her debut novel “Sevgili Arsiz Olum” (Dear Brazen Death), the story of a shantytown family who migrated from a rural community to the big city. As Turkish literature traditionally focused either on the lives of the city bourgeois or on the rural areas, Tekin’s description of the shantytown areas that had spread widely with rapid migration after 1980 was significant.