Sessions
Two Ambassadors Walk Into a Lit Fest
Diana Mickevičienė and Firat Sunel with Ramjee Chandran
The Lighthouse Family: A Turkish Translation
Firat Sunel with Dadapeer Jayman and Vasudhendra
Bio
Firat Sunel is a Turkish diplomat, lawyer, scriptwriter, and author born in Ödemiş in Western Anatolia to a family with immigrant roots. Sunel’s parents moved to Germany when he was five. He studied law at Istanbul University and did his postgraduate degree at Bochum Ruhr University in Germany. As a diplomat, he served in Bangkok, Bonn, Essen and Tbilisi before becoming Consul General in Dusseldorf. In 2013 he was appointed as the first resident Turkish Ambassador in Asmara/Eritrea. In 2016 he returned to Ankara and became Director General for Legal Affairs before being sent to New Delhi as Ambassador.
Sunel’s published novels include Salkım Söğütlerin Gölgesinde [In the Shade of the Weeping Willows, 2011] which inspired a TV series called Büyük Sürgün Kafkasya [The Great Exile Caucasia], İzmirli [Izmirli, My Last Love, 2015] and Sarpıncık Feneri [The Lighthouse Family, 2020]. His novels have been translated into several languages including Malayalam, Tamil and Kannada in India. Sunel is married with two children, and currently serves as Turkish Ambassador to India, Nepal and Bhutan.