Ahmet Altan is one of Turkey's most significant authors and journalists. Born in 1950, Ahmet graduated from the Economics Department of Istanbul University. At 24, he became a journalist, working in many positions, from reporter to editor-in-chief. His first novel, Four Seasons of Autumn , published when he was 27, won the Grand Award of the Akademi Publishing House. His second novel Trace on the Water , in 1985, was banned due to obscenity. Dangerous Tales , 1996, became a bestseller and sold more than 200,000 copies. Like a Sword Wound , 1998, won the Yunus Nadi Novel Prize, its sales surpassing 500,000 copies. In 2009, along with Roberto Saviano, he was awarded the prestigious 'Prize for the Freedom and Future of the Media' by the Media Foundation of the Sparkasse Leipzig.

In 2011, he received the International Hrant Dink Award. His novels have been translated into many languages.Alexander Dawe was born in New York and now lives and works in Istanbul. He received a PEN translation fund to translate the collected short stories of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar. He worked with Maureen Freely on a new translation of Tanpinar's novel The Time Regulation Institute (published by Penguin in the US).