Huseyin Rahmi Gurpinar

Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar was a Turkish writer and politician. He was born in Istanbul in 1864, as the son of a family close to the Ottoman court. He lost his mother at an early age and was sent to Crete where his father was an Ottoman civil servant. He returned to Istanbul and was educated privately and at the School of Political Science. He started writing fiction at an early age and became a civil servant, then a writer and journalist. He was influenced by the French naturalist and realist writers and wrote novels and stories that depicted the social and cultural changes in Turkey during the late Ottoman and early Republican periods. He also wrote humorous and satirical works that criticized the superstitions, prejudices, and corruption of his society. He was a supporter of the Young Turks movement and later served as a member of the parliament in the Turkish Republic between 1935 and 1943. He died of pneumonia in Istanbul in 1944. He is regarded as one of the most prolific and popular writers in Turkish literature. Some of his famous works include Şık (1889), İffet (1896), Kuyruklu Yıldız Altında Bir İzdivaç (1912), Gulyabani (1913), Efsuncu Baba (1924), and Utanmaz Adam (1934).