Sait Faik Abasıyanık

Sait Faik Abasıyanık (18 November 1906 – 11 May 1954) was one of the greatest Turkish writers of short stories and poetry and considered an important literary figure of the 1940s. He created a brand new style in Turkish literature and brought new life to Turkish short story writing with his harsh but humanistic portrayals of labourers, fishermen, children, the unemployed, and the poor. His stories focused on the urban lifestyle and he portrayed the denizens of the darker places in Istanbul. He also explored the "...torments of the human soul and the agony of love and betrayal..."

Biography

Born in Adapazarı, on 18 November 1906, he was educated at Istanbul Lisesi in Istanbul and then in Bursa. He enrolled in the Turcology Department of Istanbul University in 1928, but under pressure from his father went to Switzerland to study economics in 1930. He left school and lived from 1931 to 1935 in France (mainly Grenoble) A number of researchers and critics, with a view to Sait Faik's last stories, have claimed that he tended towards surrealism. The themes of those last stories and their language and narrative deeply affected the post-1950 writers in particular through these changes. Because of the originality of his style, he has been considered as the source of himself. He died on 11 May 1954 in Istanbul.

Sait Faik mostly published under the name Sait Faik, other pen names being Adalı ("Island dweller"), Sait Faik Adalı, and S. F..