Yiğit Bener

Yiğit Bener (b. Brussels, 1958) completed his primary and secondary education in Paris and Ankara. While a senior at Ankara University Faculty of Medicine, he went abroad to escape the oppressive conditions in the aftermath of the coup of 12 September 1980. He lived in Paris and Brussels for ten years, working as a childsitter, immigration counsellor, publisher, lecturer and conference translator. Bener, whose first novel was published in 2001, won the “Orhan Kemal Novel Prize” in 2012 for his novel, The Return of the Heyulan; the novel was published in French in 2014, by Actes Sud. His second book of short stories, Öteki Düşler (Other Dreams) won the 2018 “Yunus Nadi Short Story Prize”. A renowned literary translator, Bener won the prestigious Dünya “Translation of the Year Award” in 2002 for his translation of Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Journey to the End of the Night.