Adalet Ağaoğlu

Adalet Ağaoğlu (née Sümer; 1929 –2020) was a Turkish novelist and playwright, considered one of the foremost novelists of 20th-century Turkish literature. She also wrote essays, memoirs, and short stories.

As an author, playwright, and human rights activist, she became one of the most famous novelists of Turkey. Once considered to be one of the most important living authors in Turkey and a revered intellectual, her tightly constructed prose is a balance between a realistic milieu of Turkey, which she knows first-hand, and the broader, more humanistic elements of social pressure and gender prejudice.

In an unfamiliar urban world, her fictional newcomers to modernity struggle with age-old issues complicated by perplexing political, religious, economic and social forces.

For her perception of subtle and overt changes in modern Turkish society and her writing entitled "Modernism and Social Change", Ağaoğlu received the "Turkish Presidency Merit Award" in 1995. In 1998, Ağaoğlu received a "Honorary Ph.D." from Anadolu University and a "Ph.D. of Humane Letters" from the Ohio State University.