Nüsret Aziz Nesin

1915 -

Turkish playwright, novelist, short-story writer, and journalist.

Nesin was born in Istanbul, where he attended military high school and college until 1939. He worked as a journalist in Turkey in the 1940s, joining the leftist daily Tan in 1945, just before it was closed down by an anticommunist mob. He began writing novels and plays in the 1950s and quickly became known for his satirical style. He is considered by many the best Turkish humorist of recent years. He cofounded Karikatür, a humor magazine, in 1958. Since then, this prolific author has written dozens of short stories, several novels, and volumes of poetry, memoirs, and travel accounts. In the late 1980s, he served as chairman of the Turkish Writers Syndicate.

Nesin was an innovative playwright and was among the few to experiment with the theater of the absurd in the 1950s; he went on to write the leading plays of the 1970s. These included the antiwar play The War between the Whistlers, Brushers, and Yasar, Neither Dead nor Alive.

Bibliography

Şener, Sevda. "Contemporary Turkish Drama." In TheTransformation of Turkish Culture, edited by Günsel Renda and C. Max Kortepeter. Princeton, NJ: Kingston Press, 1986.

— ELIZABETH THOMPSON