All prizes Türkiye
Orhan Kemal Roman Armağanı
Türkiye · Since 1972 · For books in Turkish
Awarded each May in Istanbul by the family of the writer Orhan Kemal to the best Turkish novel first published in the previous year. Only the winner is announced.
The family of the novelist Orhan Kemal founded the prize in 1972, and it has been given every year since, except in 1981. It is open to every novel first published in the previous calendar year that its author or publisher submits, and a jury of seven, chaired by a member of the family, meets in the second week of May to choose one winner from the several dozen books entered; no shortlist is published. The jury looks for a contemporary language and narrative power and a novel that takes up the problems of society and the individual, in keeping with Orhan Kemal's art and outlook. The winner receives a gold and silver plaque on 2 June, the anniversary of his death, at the Orhan Kemal Library in Beyazıt, Istanbul. In some years, among them 2000 and 2025, the jury honoured a writer's whole body of work instead of a single novel.
Orhan Kemal 2026 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Red Wheat”
Ahmet Büke · 55 when first published
Novel · Historical, War, Politics
AI-generated summary:In the hills of Gördes in western Anatolia, as the Ottoman Empire falls apart, poor peasants bound to their land take up arms in the War of Independence while the rich of the plain deal with the occupiers.
Orhan Kemal 2024 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Perpetual Motion”
Novel · 237 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:In Istanbul's Beşiktaş, Serkan, who delivers bottled water, is shaken by ever stranger dreams; a lost stone and a letter tie his life to people who lived in the same place across a century and a half.
Orhan Kemal 2023 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“My Father's Saz”
Kemal Varol · 45 when first published
Novel · 211 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Years after he drove his long-absent father to a festival of folk minstrels, Yusuf takes to the snowy roads again, carrying his father's coffin home along with his old suitcase and his saz.
Orhan Kemal 2022 · Winner
Taş ve Gölge
Burhan Sönmez · 56 when first published
Novel · 432 pages · Historical, Love
AI-generated summary:Orphaned as a boy in Mardin, near the Syrian border, Avdo learns to carve gravestones from an old master and spends a long life among the dead and the living.
Orhan Kemal 2021 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Family Grave”
Herkül Millas · 80 when first published
Novel · 176 pages · Family, Migration
AI-generated summary:A tragicomic story of the Greeks of Istanbul who left for Athens and of those who stayed, told around one man and a crowd of relatives, neighbours and friends of many faiths.
Orhan Kemal 2020 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“A Case”
Ayhan Geçgin · 49 when first published
Novel · 208 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:When news comes that his father is in prison, a young man standing beside his weeping mother finds no words of comfort, sensing that the real misfortune struck the family long before.
Orhan Kemal 2019 · Winner
Faruk Duman · 44 when first published
Novel · 568 pages · Nature, Politics
AI-generated summary:In the hard winter of 1979, in the villages around a small town in north-eastern Turkey, frightening events befall villagers already caught in the political tension and insecurity of the time.
Orhan Kemal 2018 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Servant”
Seray Şahiner · 33 when first published
Novel
AI-generated summary:Mercan earns her living mopping apartment stairwells; as urban renewal empties her neighbourhood and her husband walks out, she is left alone with her hopes, her vows and her visits to shrines.
Orhan Kemal 2017 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Forgetful Mirror”
Novel · 277 pages · Historical, War, Politics
AI-generated summary:In Nevşehir in June 1915, as the town's Armenians wait for the deportation order to reach them, a colonel arrives from Boğazlıyan and a mysterious coffin travels across central Anatolia.
Orhan Kemal 2016 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Ninth Haşmet”
İbrahim Yıldırım · 65 when first published
Novel · Politics
AI-generated summary:In June 2013, Haşmet Alçıtepe, a forgotten poet and former resistance fighter who lives in a very old wooden house, goes out to Taksim wearing the shirt of his football team.
Orhan Kemal 2015 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Thief and the Bourgeois”
Hüsnü Arkan · 56 when first published
Novel · Satire, Crime, Politics
AI-generated summary:Born on the day of the 1980 coup to an accountant and a teacher, Evren grows up in a poor neighbourhood whose people, from a girl living off the rubbish dumps to a thief and a tycoon, are bound together by theft.
Orhan Kemal 2014 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Naked and Alone”
Hamdi Koç · 50 when first published
Novel · 599 pages · Historical, Family, Politics
AI-generated summary:In the days of the 1960 coup, Mesut Akarsu, a young man in Ankara who thinks he has no relatives left, reluctantly travels to Ünye for an uncle's funeral and begins to suspect old massacres.
Orhan Kemal 2013 · Winner
Novel · 284 pages · Family, Migration, Politics
AI-generated summary:Driven from their village in the east of Turkey in the 1990s, a family fails to find a footing in the city; four siblings, Zahit, Süsen, Nahit and Gülcan, tell twenty years of their lives.
Orhan Kemal 2012 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Spectre's Return”
Yiğit Bener · 53 when first published
Novel · Politics
AI-generated summary:A man who left Turkey for political reasons after the 1980 coup, and passed over to the other world, comes back from exile in the early 1990s as a kind of spectre and finds his country and family changed.
Orhan Kemal 2011 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“You Are My Secret, You Are My Confidant”
Kâmuran Şipal · 84 when first published
Novel · 279 pages
AI-generated summary:An old man travels to the town where he was born to visit his mother's grave, and the journey becomes a long descent into the depths of his memory.
Orhan Kemal 2010 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The Devil's Minarets”
Hidayet Karakuş · 63 when first published
Novel · 333 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:Nilüfer wakes in a hospital, half her face lost under bandages; the novel traces what the massacre of 2 July 1993 in Sivas did to the lives of the people caught up in it.
Orhan Kemal 2009 · Winner
Son Ada
Zülfü Livaneli · 62 when first published
Novel · 320 pages · Politics, Nature
AI-generated summary:On a small, self-governing island of forty households, a retired president who once led a military coup settles down and sets out to rule it alone, as he sees fit.
Orhan Kemal 2008 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Weeping Mountain, Silent River”
Ayşegül Devecioğlu · 51 when first published
Novel · 264 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:After the death of Naciye, the Roma woman who cleaned her family's house and told her fairy tales, a middle-class woman goes to Naciye's neighbourhood in Edirne to trace the secrets hidden in those tales.
Orhan Kemal 2007 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Keep Your Head High”
Hıfzı Topuz · 83 when first published
Novel · 264 pages · Historical, Politics
AI-generated summary:Drawing on documents, a novel retraces the life of the writer Sabahattin Ali through his friendships with poets, painters and journalists, his exiles and his years in prison.
Orhan Kemal 2006 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“The East of Sleep”
Hasan Ali Toptaş · 47 when first published
Novel · 229 pages
AI-generated summary:A writer sits at his desk trying to begin his uncle's story, but every time his imaginary double Haydar appears at the window, another story is born and the one he means to tell is put off.
Orhan Kemal 2005 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Death Has No Shadow”
Adnan Binyazar · 70 when first published
Novel · 327 pages · Love, Autofiction
AI-generated summary:A young teacher newly posted to a remote corner of Anatolia falls in love at first sight with a student at a teacher-training school, beginning a love that lasts until death and beyond.
Orhan Kemal 2003 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Relationships”
Erhan Bener · 73 when first published
Novel · 348 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Over a few days in a hospital room, an older generation, Muzaffer Bey, his wife Zehra Hanım and İhsan Bey, and their middle-aged children İhsan and Hümeyra face the unhappiness of their lives.
Orhan Kemal 2002 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“This Summer Will Be the First Summer of Parting”
Selim İleri · 52 when first published
Novel · 185 pages
AI-generated summary:On a spring night, a writer sits up reading his old notebooks, letters and scraps of paper, resolved to rid himself of the skeletons of memory that haunt him.
Orhan Kemal 2001 · Winner
Title translated by AI:“Its Warm Ashes Remain”
Oya Baydar · 60 when first published
Novel · 438 pages · Politics, Historical
AI-generated summary:After the collapse of the Soviet bloc, a group of Turkish socialists who once believed in revolution must face what remains of four decades of their lives, between Istanbul, Eskişehir, Ankara, Moscow and Paris.