About Us
Telemak Editions is an Istanbul based publishing house specializing in humanities and critical editions of classics. Telemak is a double reference. For starters, it's Telemachus (Τηλέμαχος - the son of Odysseus) in Turkish. But this figure, as the hero of Les aventures de Télémaque by Fénelon, became a site of encounter with the West for the first generation of modern Ottoman intellectuals. This book "Tercüme-i Telemak" was the first modern fiction translated into Turkish (and also Arabic and Russian). We understand Telemak as a figure, a topos, a crossing, traversing unlikely spaces and times. Founded in 2021, Telemak has released more than fifty books.
Select Translated Titles
HUMANITIES
György Lukács - The Historical Novel (Verso)
Adeeb Khalid - Central Asia (Princeton University Press)
Michael Christopher Low - Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj (Columbia University Press)
Albert Memmi - Portrait du colonisé (Gallimard)
E. Stoneman, R. Wyllie, S.E. Knepper - Byung-Chul Han: A Critical Introduction (Polity)
Michel Foucault - Introduction to Kant's Anthropology (Vrin)
Massimo Recalcati - The Enduring Kiss (Feltrinelli)
Emil Cioran - An Essay on Reactionary Thought: Joseph de Maistre (Fata Morgana)
Georges Sorel - Reflections on Violence
LITERATURE
Victor Shklovsky - Zoo, or Letters Not About Love
Theodor Fontane - Effi Briest
Adalbert Stifter - Brigitta
Karolina Pavlova - Double Life
Restif de La Bretonne - La vie de mon père
Louis-Sébastien Mercier - Panorama of Paris
Senancour - Obermann
Dezső Kosztolányi - Skylark
Géza Gárdonyi - The Stars of Eger
Gyula Krúdy - Sunflower
Ovid - Heroides
D.H. Lawrence - Studies in Classic American Literature
Authors and Titles We Represent
Telemak publishes select Turkish titles, please get in touch with us for more information.
Alp Eren Topal
Alp Eren Topal studies late Ottoman Empire-Modern Turkey with a focus on the history of social and political concepts in the longue durée. His book "Cumhurdan Cumhuriyete" traces the evolution of the Early Modern conception of public (Cumhur) to early 19th century. It is a seminal contribution to the field of Begriffsgeschichte based on Ottoman primary sources.
Doğan Gürpınar
We have published five titles by Doğan Gürpınar. Doğan is a prolific political science scholar. Besides his rich work that is already available in English, he wrote several interconnected histories in Turkish focusing on the 20th century cultural and political developments in Turkey. These titles are:
- The History of Proper Names in Turkey
- The Book of Conspiracies: Conspiracy Theory Industry in Turkey
- The Republic of Nostalgia: Politics of Melancholy and Past in Turkey
- Brazen and Daring: The 90s in Turkey
- In the Land of Liberty Chained: Histories and Futures of Liberalism in Turkey
Ahmet Cevat Emre
Ahmet Cevat Emre is one of those fin-de-siècle figures who crisscrossed unlikely spaces and survived. Born in Ottoman Crete during civil turmoil, he learned Turkish at primary school and later joined the military school in Istanbul. He was imprisoned at high school for being a member of the Unionist conspiracy and faced exile. During the constitutional period after 1908 he rose to prominence as a pedagogue and linguist. He studied under Friedrich Giese. In 1920 he migrated to Soviets and started teaching at KUTV (The Communist University of the Toilers of the East) and represented USSR on several occasions. Afraid of the purges, he came back to Turkey after a few years and started a journal named Muhit. Upon Atatürk's invitation he joined the Committee of Linguistic Reform and facilitated the transition to Latin alphabet. Besides numerous linugistic and philological contributions, he has translated Homeros, Aeschylus and Anatole France among others. We represent all his works.