Ece Temelkuran is one of Turkey’s best-known novelists and political commentators. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, Newstatesman, Frankfurter Allgemeine, Der Spiegel among many other prominent international media outlets. She has lived in several countries such as Lebanon, Tunisia, Paris and Oxford to write her novels. She was a visiting fellow at Saint Anthony’s College, University of Oxford. Her recent novels Banana Sounds, Women Who Blow On Knots (Edinburg Book Award) and The Time of Mute Swans are published in several languages. During her twenty years of journalism, before she lost her job due to the political oppression in Turkey, she has been “the most read columnist” several times. She has twice been rated as “one of the 10 most influential people in social media”. She gave the “Freedom Lecture” as a guest of Amnesty International and the Prince Claus Foundation. Among many other places, she has given speeches at Oxford, London School of Economics, Harvard University, Columbia University, MIT and the House of Commons in British Parliament. She appeared on BBC’s Hard Talk and the BBC Radio 4 series Imagining The New Truth for her book Turkey: The Insane and Melancholy, a non-fiction work telling about the rising authoritarianism in her country. The book has been published in several languages since 2016 and praised by the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Book Review and The Times. She lives in Zagreb working on a book on populism.