Ahmet RasÍm

Born 1864 in Istanbul; died there in 1932. Turkish writer, critic, and journalist.

Ahmet Rasim was a lower-echelon official. He began his literary activity with translations from French. He is the author of novellas, novels, and short stories, in which he reveals a knowledge of the life-styles and mores of different layers of society. He was particularly successful in depicting the life of the people in scenes imbued with a lively sense of humor—for example, in Son of the Soldier (1894) and Ulfet the Bath Attendant (1899). Ahmet Rasim’s poetry and songs won acclaim, as did his memoirs: Letters From the City (1890), My Nights (1894), and others. He won fame as a historian and literary critic and as author of the works Ottoman History (4 vols., 1910–11), History and the Writer (1913), Two Reminiscences (1916), and From Absolutism to Democracy (1923). He took a stand as a pamphleteer against Western influence.