Mehmed Uzun
Mehmed Uzun (January 1, 1953 – October 10, 2007) was a
Kurdish writer and novelist born in
Siverek,
Şanlıurfa Province,
Turkey. Though the
Kurdish language was outlawed in Turkey from 1920 to 1990, he started to write in it and achieved much toward shaping a modern Kurdish literary language and reviving the Kurdish tradition of storytelling. In 1977–2005 he lived in exile in
Sweden as a political refugee, becoming a prolific writer, author of a dozen Kurdish-language novels and essays, which made him a founding member of Kurdish literature in
Kurmanji dialect. In June 2005 he returned to
Istanbul. He was a member of the
PEN club and the Swedish writers association. On May 29, 2006, he was found to have
stomach cancer. After treatment at the
Karolinska University Hospital in
Stockholm, he returned to
Diyarbakir,
Turkey, where he died, aged 54.
Provided by Wikipedia