Tevfik Fikret was the first Turkish artist to open the gate to the Occident and he is one of most established voices in Turkish literature. Through his works, his life, and his novelties, he earned his place as one of the corner stones of Turkish literature. In other words, he is one of those prominent names we heard often after our school years. Yet, who really is Tevfik Fikret? What is his significance, and can we say that we really know him as he deserves to be known?

The book Tevfik Fikret is a gift that attempts a brand-new perspective on the author 106 years later. While three-fourths of the book features older texts, the remaining are more contemporary pieces written after 1970. This selection of content presents a retrospective of evaluations stretching from the past to the present. Additionally, this arrangement documents the ever-changing and developing language, the form, the world view, the understanding of the literary, and the critical stance that the writers have employed in their treatment of the artist over time.

Tevfik Fikret is also the first book of “Armağan Kitaplar” (“Gift Books”), the new series of Koç University Press. The series is prepared by Turgut Çeviker and upcoming publications will include books on Yılmaz Güney, Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil, Yahya Kemal Beyatlı, Nurullah Ataç, Sait Faik Abasıyanık, Sabahattin Ali, Fikret Muallâ Saygı, Yaşar Kemal, and Âşık Veysel Şatıroğlu. These gift books, which can be also considered as biographies with multiple authors, are amply illustrated, they analyze the body of writing published on the names in question, and they are compilations created through the distillation of original narratives.

Turgut Çeviker was born in Çarşamba (Samsun) in 1950. He attended primary, secondary, and high school on Çarşamba. He started his studies in Turkology at the Faculty of Letters of Istanbul University and continued at Ankara University’s Faculty of Languages, History, and Geography. He left the university in his final year. He worked as an assistant director in the Turkish film industry from 1972 to 1978. After 1977, he focused his efforts on humor. He founded the publishing and filmmaking company İris in 1993 and published magazines and books on humor.