Burhan Sönmez is the author of four novels, that have been translated into forty languages. He was born in Turkey and grew up speaking Turkish and Kurdish. He worked as a lawyer in Istanbul before going to Britain as a political exile. His writing has appeared in papers including The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, and La Repubblica. He translated the poetry book of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake into Turkish. He lectured in Literature at the university of METU. He received Vaclav Havel Library Award in 2017 and the EBRD Literature Prize in 2018. A board member of PEN International, he divides his time between Istanbul and Cambridge.
