People like Peyami Safa

Peyami Safa (1899, Istanbul-June 15, 1961, Istanbul) was a Turkish journalist, columnist and novelist.

He was born in 1899 to writer and poet İsmail Safa (1867–1901) in Istanbul, Ottoman Empire. While he was only two years old, his father died in exile in Sivas. During his youth years until the age of seventeen, he lived in psychic and physical depression due a bone sickness he suffered from at the age of eight or nine. He rejected his doctors' advice to amputate his arm. Safa described his experiences in hospitals in his novel Dokuzuncu Hariciye Koğuşu, which was filmed in 1967.

In 1911, Peyami Safa had to give up his education at Vefa High School, and began working in a printing house and later in the Ministry of Post. He taught himself French, and in 1918 together with his elder brother began publishing a newspaper. In later years, he published three literary periodicals. He also wrote in various newspapers sometimes as a columnist, and sometimes as a novelist.