Ahmet Ümit

Ahmet Ümit — Biography

Ahmet Ümit is one of the most widely read crime writers in Turkey. He started with poetry and short stories and later built his novels around the history and murder files of Istanbul; he is also a screenwriter and television presenter. The Chief Inspector Nevzat books and İstanbul Hatırası are among his best-known works, and in 2026 a new novel was announced for October.

He came to literature from a political youth. Active in the left from the age of fourteen, he studied public administration at Marmara University and in 1985-86 was sent by the Communist Party of Turkey to the Academy of Social Sciences in Moscow; Kar Kokusu carries traces of those years. He left active politics in 1989 and published the poetry book Sokağın Zulası. His first story collection, Çıplak Ayaklıydı Gece (1992), won the Ferit Oğuz Bayır Thought and Art Prize. He then turned to crime fiction: Sis ve Gece (1996) became the first Turkish crime novel translated into a foreign language, published in Greece, and Patasana, Kukla, Beyoğlu Rapsodisi, Bab-ı Esrar and İstanbul Hatırası followed.

His books have reached the screen too: Sis ve Gece was filmed in 2007, and his stories were the basis of the series Karanlıkta Koşanlar and Şeytan Ayrıntıda Gizlidir. From 2010 he presented Yaşadığın Şehir on Habertürk, a programme on the hidden history of cities.