TEHRAN – An audiobook narrating the love letters Turkish writer Nazim Hikmet’s wife, Piraye, wrote to him during his long captivity has been released in Tehran for Persian listeners.

The letters have been accumulated by Turkish writer Nazan Arisoy in the book “Being Nazim in Piraye” (“Piraye’de Nazim Olmak”) published in Turkey in 2018.

Bahman Vakhshour and Maryam Moqaddam are the narrators of the audiobook produced by Avaye Chirok based on a Persian translation by Yasaman Puri. The Persian edition was published by the Sang publishing house in 2019.

Hikmet (1902–1963) was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, director and memoirist, who was acclaimed for the lyrical flow of his statements.

Described as a “romantic communist” and “romantic revolutionary”, he was repeatedly arrested for his political beliefs and spent much of his adult life at Bursa Prison or in exile. 

Hikmet never read most of the letters sent by Piraye, his third wife, as his warden confiscated them beforehand.  

Hikmet’s imprisonment at Bursa Prison and his relationships with Piraye and his translator and lover Munevver Andac have been portrayed in “Mavi Gozlu Dev” (“Blue Eyed Giant”), a 2007 Turkish biographical film about Hikmet, whose poetry has been translated into more than fifty languages.

Despite his persecution by the Turkish state, Hikmet has always been revered by the Turkish nation. His poems depict the people of the countryside, villages, towns and cities of his homeland.

Following his death, the Kremlin ordered the publication of the poet’s first-ever Turkish-language collected works in communist Bulgaria, where at that time a large and still recognized Turkish national minority existed. 

The eight volumes of these collected works, “Butun Eserleri”, appeared at Sofia between 1967 and 1972, that is, in the very last years of the existence of the Turkish minority educational and publishing system in Bulgaria.

Photo: Cover of the audiobook of the Persian translation of “Being Nazim in Piraye”.

MMS/YAW