Nazım Hikmet

Nazım Hikmet — Biography

Nâzım Hikmet Ran (15 January 1902, Thessaloniki – 3 June 1963, Moscow) was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist and screenwriter regarded as a founder of modern Turkish poetry and the pioneer of free verse in the Turkish language. His poetry has been translated into more than fifty languages, and he was awarded the International Peace Prize in 1950. He was educated at Galatasaray High School and the Turkish Naval High School before studying at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East and Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Because of his communist convictions and membership in the banned Turkish Communist Party, Hikmet was tried in eleven separate cases in Turkey and spent more than twelve years in prisons in Istanbul, Ankara, Çankırı and Bursa; while barred from publishing under his own name he wrote under the pseudonyms Orhan Selim, Ahmet Oğuz, Mümtaz Osman and Ercüment Er. He left Turkey in 1951, was stripped of his Turkish citizenship and took Polish citizenship; the citizenship decision was annulled 46 years after his death, on 5 January 2009.

Alongside his literary work, Hikmet was active in cinema, serving as screenwriter, director and producer on numerous films during the 1930s and 1940s. He died of a heart attack in Moscow on 3 June 1963 and remains buried there.