Sema Kaygusuz

Sema Kaygusuz (born August 29, 1972, in Samsun, Turkey)^[1] is a novelist, playwright, essayist, and short story writer from Turkey.^[2][3][4][5] Her work has been translated into English, Italian, German, French, Swedish, and Norwegian. She won a Yunus Nadi Award in 2016 for her novel Laughter of the Barbarian. Among other accolades, she is a recipient of the Cevdet-Kudret-Literature Award, the France-Turquie Literary Award, and was named laureate of the German Friedrich Rückert Prize.^[6][7][8] The English translation of her novel Yüzünde Bir Yer (Every Fire You Tend) won both the TA First Translation Prize and an English PEN Award.^[9] She currently resides in Istanbul.^[10]

As a screenwriter, she co-wrote the screenplay for the 2008 film Pandora's Box (Turkish: Pandora'nın Kutusu) with director Yeşim Ustaoğlu.^[11]

Selected works

In Turkish

• Ortadan Yarısından (short story), 1997
• Sandık Lekesi (short story), 2000
• Doyma Noktası (short story), 2002
• Esir Sözler Kuyusu (short story), 2004
• Yere Düşen Dualar (novel), 2006
• Yüzünde Bir Yer (novel), 2009
• Karaduygun (short story), 2012
• Barbarın Kahkahası (novel), 2016
• Aramızdaki Ağaç Yazılar (essays), 2019

Translated works

• Wein und Gold Roman, translated by Barbara Yurtdaş and Hüseyin Yurtdaş (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2008)
• La chute des prières: roman, translated by Noémi Cingöz (Actes Sud, 2009)
• Ce lieu sur ton visage: roman, translated by Catherine Erikan (Actes Sud, 2013)^[12]
• En bønn faller til jorden, translated by Cora Skylstad (Cappelen Damm, 2015)
• Platsen i ditt ansikte, translated by Ulla Bruncrona (Ersatz, 2015)
• The Well of Trapped Words, translated by Maureen Freely (Comma Press, 2015)^[13][14]
• L'éclat de rire du barbare, translated by Catherine Erikan (Lettres turques, 2017)
• Every Fire You Tend, translated by Nicholas Glastonbury (Tilted Axis Press, 2019)
• La risata del barbaro, translated by Giulia Ansaldo (Voland, 2020)
• The Passenger: Turkey (Europa Editions, 2021)

See also

• Kurdistan +100: Stories from a Future State