Burhan Sönmez was born in Central Anatolia and grew up speaking Kurdish and Turkish. He studied law in Istanbul and lived in political exile in Britain. In 2011, he was awarded the Sedat Simavi Literature Prize for his second novel, Sins and Innocents. He is the Prize’s youngest recipient. Sönmez lectures at the Middle East Technical University on literary theory. Translated from the Turkish by Umit Hussein, his latest novel, Istanbul Istanbul, debuts this spring from OR Books.
