Nurdan Gürbilek
Nurdan Gürbilek is one of the foremost cultural critics in Turkey. She is the author of Vitrinde Yaşamak, an analysis of the cultural dynamics of the 1980s in Turkey, as well as other essay collections, including Kötü Çocuk Türk, an analysis of some of the significant images and tropes in modern Turkish literature and popular culture. The New Cultural Climate in Turkey: Living in a Shop Window (Zed, 2010) combines selected essays from both of these collections. Translator and editor of a collection of essays by Walter Benjamin in Turkish, Gürbilek has received some of Turkey’s most prestigious awards for her own writing, including the 2010 Erdal Öz Award, an annual award for lifetime literary achievement in literature, and the 2011 Cevdet Kudret Award for her most recent book, Benden Önce Bir Başkası, a comparative study of works from Turkish and world literature.