Kamuran Şipal dies aged 92

ISTANBUL

Writer and translator Kamuran Şipal, who is known for the works he translated from German to Turkish, especially the ones of Franz Kafka, died at the age of 92.

Born in 1926, novel and story writer Şipal graduated from Istanbul University’s Department of German Language and Literature in 1955. After working as an assistant in the same department for two years, he did academic work in Germany for two years.

When he returned to Turkey, Şipal worked as a German lecturer at Istanbul University School of Foreign Languages and retired from there. He was living in Istanbul.

His first poem and the first story were published in Varşık magazine in 1949 and 1951 respectively. His stories, essays, and translations were published in journals such as “Varlık”, “Türk Dili,” “Yelken,” “Ataç,” “Yeni Gazete” and “Period” between 1949 and 1970.

In his stories, he examined the relationships and conflicts between the inner and outer lives of middle-class people with a realistic-fanciful approach, addressing the causes of events and conflicts. He explored the themes of loneliness, anxiety, unhappiness, desperation, separation and regret within the traditional narrative.

Among the writers that Şipal translated into Turkish from German were Franz Kafka, Alfred Adler, Ingeborg Bachmann, Wolfgang Borchert, Heinrich Böll, Alfred Brauchle, Bertolt Brecht, Sigmund Freud, Günter Grass, Carl Mann, Thomas Mann and Rainer Maria Rilke.