The Conqueror

Fiction. Translated from the Turkish by Yavuz Demir and John Ottenhoff. The author of over thirty books, including novels, essays, short stories, literary criticism, and travel writing, Gursel received Turkey's highest literature prize, the Prize of the Turkish Language Academy, in 1976 for his volume of stories A Summer Without End. In 1986, he received the Ipekci Prize promoting Turkish-Greek cultural understanding for The First Woman. In the same year he received the Prix de la Liberte of the French PEN club. He also received the Radio France Internationale Prize for the best novel of 1990, and in 2003 he won the France-Turkey Prize for his lifetime achievements. In 2004 he received the Fernand Rouillon Literary Prize from the Franco-Turkish Committee at the Turkish Tourism Office in Paris. In the same year he was named a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. He received his doctorate in comparative literature from the Sorbonne in 1979. His most recent novel is llah'in Kizlari (The Daughters of Allah), published in 2008. THE CONQUEROR was first published in Turkish as Bogazkesen: Fatih'in Romani in 1996.