Biography
Orhan Kemal was born in Adana, Ceyhan, on 15 September 1914 and died on June 2, 1970 in a hospital in Sofia, Bulgaria due to intracranial hemorrhage. He is interred in Zincirlikuyu Cemetery, Istanbul.
Kemal's father was obliged to flee Turkey to Syria where Kemal remained with him for a year before returning to Adana in 1932. Kemal worked as a labourer, a weaver and as a clerk in a cotton mill. While doing his military service in 1938 his political opinions led to his being sentenced to a 5 year term of imprisonment. The charges included "reading the works of Maxim Gorky and Nazim Hikmet" and "propagandising for foreign regimes and encouring revolt". While in prison in Bursa he met Hikmet, who was his major literary influence. After being released from prison in 1943 he returned to Adana, working as a labourer, and beginning to publish his writings. Although he started as a writer of poetry he soon began to publish stories, from 1943 under the adopted name Orhan Kemal.
Following the birth of his third child (of four) Kemal moved his family to Istanbul in 1951 where he worked again as a labourer and then from 1951 as a clerk at the Tuberculosis Foundation, living with little money and all the time writing.
He was arrested again in 1966 for "forming a communist propagandist cell" but was released two months later after the charges could not be substantiated.
Orhan Kemal died in hospital in 1970 while visiting Bulgaria upon the invitation of the Bulgarian Writers Union.
A museum and bookshop dedicated to Kemal and his work is to be found in the modest flat in which he lived at 30 Akarsu Caddesi, Cihangir, Istanbul. After his death a literary award was established in his name, the Orhan Kemal Novel Prize (1972).
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