by Yas¸ar Kemal

Yas¸ar Kemal was born Sadik Kemal Gökçeli in 1923 in Hemite, a village in the Çukurova region (Adana province) of southern Turkey. As a child he was trained in the tradition of the wandering bards of Anatolia, who traveled throughout the region singing traditional folk songs and epics from a rich oral tradition. At age nine, Kemal attended school to learn to read and write, becoming one of the first literate members of his village. Kemal graduated from high school, but partly owing to poverty, never completed a university degree. Interested in the folklore and ethnology of Anatolia, he continued his studies through the Halk Evleri or “People’s Houses,” institutions established in 1932 by the new Republic of Turkey under its first president, Atatürk, to educate Turks in the cities and towns of Anatolia. Kemal’s first...