Must-Read Works and Books of Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil

Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil, one of the most important names of Turkish literature who lived and worked in the last years of the empire and the first years of the republic, successfully described the change of this period in his novels. Let’s take a closer look at some of Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil’s works that every literature enthusiast should read.

He was born in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, in 1866. In addition to his literary identity, Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil He served as the chief chamberlain in the palace and became a member of the Majlis-i Ayan. Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil, who started to publish his own works after a few attempts at French translation, produced works under different pseudonyms in many important magazines of the period.

He died on March 27, 1945. Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil did not become a transition period writer. on the contrary, he succeeded in conveying both periods successfully in his novels. In his works, which he wrote emulating the French realists, he caught a unique style over time. So much so that he himself gave the first real examples of the story genre in Turkish literature. If you haven’t read the works of Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil, you have lost a lot.

Some of the works of Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil that Turkish literature enthusiasts must read:

  • miserable
  • in the humidity
  • Diary of a Dead
  • Individual and Companion
  • Mai and Black
  • Forbidden Love
  • Prose Poems and Voices from the Grave
  • Broken Lives
  • About Love
  • The Enemy Hiding: Stories About Men
  • Forty Years
  • Palace and Beyond

A woman’s story: Miserable

Sefile, the first novel written by the author in 1887, tells a woman’s story to its readers. A young girl named Mazlume because he was orphaned at a young age She had to beg first and then prostitution. This dark whirlpool, which he is busy with, resembles a hell that seems to have no end.

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Depth characters: Humidity

in the humidity

Nemide, one of Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil’s novels from the Izmir period, is also the author’s It is the first novel to be published in book form. Even though the book is about a strange love triangle between a young man and two young girls, the way the characters are formed and narrated also gives this work a deep psychological subtext.

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Diary of a Dead

One of Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil’s early novels, The Book of a Dead, tells the reader a hopeless love story. In the novel, we have three characters named Vecdi, Hüsam and Nigar and a great love. Here, the love story in this triangle is presented to the reader with a fiction whose example has not been seen before in Turkish literature.

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Individual and Companion

Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil’s ‘The last of my great novels written in İzmir.’ In fact, Ferdi ve Şükrü, which he called In a way that we have not seen many examples in Turkish literature. It tells about the Istanbul trade world of the period. The novel, which also carries traces of the commercial life of the Uşaklıgil family, actually brings together the most visible examples of class conflict with the reader.

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Secrets of the press world: Mai and Black

Mai and Black

Mai ve Siyah is known as one of the author’s masterpieces. Our main character in the work Ahmet Cemil is a civil servant, but his heart is in writing. It is through this character that we dive into the press world of the period and throughout the novel we learn some secrets that only the people of that world know.

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Aa, the book of the series is out: Aşk-ı Memnu

Forbidden Love

One of the turning points not only of Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil, but also of Turkish literature. Aşk-ı Memnu tells the Istanbul of the period with its barest facts. Of course, we all know this work as an adaptation of the most successful TV series of Turkish television, but rest assured, the story told in the novel is much more impressive.

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Prose Poems and Voices from the Grave

There is poetry, and there is prose, but there is also prose poetry, known as poem en prose. The most important examples of this genre, which was brought to Turkish literature during the Serveti-i Fünun period, Of course, Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil gave it. These works, which were not even mentioned for many years because they were overshadowed by his novels, were compiled in the book Prose Poems and Voices from the Grave.

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Broken Lives

Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil started to serialize in the magazine Servet-i Fünun, but Kırık Hayatlar, which found the opportunity to meet with the reader only twenty years after it was written due to censorship, One of the author’s most realistic works. The two contrasting characters in the work, in which society is told in its most bare form, are a kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde talks about the conflict.

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The pessimistic inner worlds: On Love

About Love

On Love is perhaps the author’s work with one of the most pessimistic narratives. narrated the author focusing on the inner world of each of the characters; It tells in a unique language how the indispensable facts of humanity such as love, death, loneliness, poverty and madness create changes in our lives, even if we ignore them.

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The Enemy Hiding: Stories About Men

Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil, whom we know and love as a novelist, also wrote stories. Here is the Enemy Hiding. These stories, masterfully written by the author, were compiled in Stories About Men. As the name suggests our main characters in these stories are men but since these men are from different segments of society, each story opens the door to another world.

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An author’s memories as a writer: Forty Years

Forty Years

Forty Years, in which we had the opportunity to read the times Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil lived, not through stories, but from his own mouth. it is a memoir. Although this work, which describes the period of Abdülhamid and the cultural environment shaped around the magazine Servet-i Fünun, which the author personally witnessed, was frequently used as a source work later on.

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The aspects of the palace we never knew: Palace and Beyond

Palace and Beyond

We said that Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil was working in the palace, and Saray ve Ötesi describes that period of the author. In this period, which was shaped around Sultan Mehmed the Fifth, the Committee of Union and Progress, the Constitutional Monarchy Our writer, who works as the chief chamberlain, tells the events from the perspectives that no one has seen.

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one of the most important writers of Turkish literature. We have listed some of the works signed by Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil. If there are Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil works that you read on our list, you can share your thoughts in the comments.


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