Biography

Orhan Kemal (15 September 1914 – 2 June 1970) is the pen name of Turkish novelist Mehmet Raşit Öğütçü. He is known for his realist novels that describe the life of the poor in Turkey. Orhan Kemal was born in Ceyhan, Adana, on 15 September 1914. He was the son of Abdülkadir Kemali Bey, who was a Member of Parliament and Minister, and Azime Hanım, who was an intellectual secondary school graduate.

Kemal's father was obliged to flee Turkey for Syria, due to his party being suspected of involvement in a recent revolt, 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 encouraging revolt". While in prison in Bursa he was the cellmate of Hikmet, who was his major literary influence. He had been writing poems until he met Hikmet. With his encouragement, he switched to stories. 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. He was one of the contributors of the literary magazine Adımlar between 1943 and 1944.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 on 2 June 1970, in a hospital in Sofia, due to intracranial hemorrhage, in 1970, while visiting Bulgaria upon the invitation of the Bulgarian Writers Union. He is interred in Zincirlikuyu Cemetery, Istanbul.