"Onat, çağdaş Türkiye'nin bir 'önsöz'üdür; çünkü sanatın, yazının uygarlığın 'sonsöz'ü yoktur; üstelik, biliyorum ki bu kısacık 'Önsöz', Onat için, hiç mi hiç yeterli değildir. Yaşasaydı, daha neier yazabileceğini düşündükçe, yitirdiğimizin ne olduğunu çok daha çarpıcı bir biçimde duyumsuyorum. Ne var ki, bu yazıyı bir ölünün değil, bir dirinin kitabına önsöz gibi yazdığımı da söylemeliyim. Onat yaşarken diriydi, öldükten sonra da diri kalacak." İlhan Selçuk
Author
Mehmet Arif Onat Kutlar, also known as Onat Kutlar, was a prominent Turkish writer and poet, founder of the Turkish Sinematek and one of the founders of the Istanbul International Film Festival. Onat Kutlar was born in Alanya, Turkey in 1936. He was the grandson of Arif Pasha, an Ottoman governor of the Taif district and the son of Ali Riza Bey, a penal judge of the young Turkish Republic and later a farmer, and Meliha Hanim. He grew up in the city of Gaziantep. He studied law at Istanbul University and philosophy in Paris. His book, Ishak (1959), composed of nine short stories, most of which are written from the point of view of a child and are often surrealistic and mystical was the recipient of the 1960 "Turkish Language Association Short Story Award". According to the literary critic Fethi Naci, these represent a very early example of magical realism genre. He died on January 11, 1995 in Istanbul resulting from injuries sustained in a terrorist bomb attack (carried out by the terrorist organization PKK) which occurred on December 30, 1994 at The Marmara Hotel's cafeteria in Taksim. He was laid to rest at the Aşiyan Asri Cemetery. -From Wikipedia-
