Ahmet Altan, one of today's most important Turkish writers and journalists, was arrested in September 2016 and sentenced to life in prison on false charges. An advocate for Kurdish and Armenian minorities and a strong voice of dissent in his country, his arrest and conviction received widespread international criticism (51 Nobel laureates signed an open letter to Turkey's president calling for Altan's release). He was finally released in April 2021. Altan is the author of ten novels--all bestsellers in Turkey--and seven books of essays. In 2009 he received the Freedom and Future of the Media Prize from the Media Foundation of Sparkasse Leipzig, and in 2011 he was awarded the International Hrant Dink Award. The international bestseller Endgame was his English-language debut, and was named one of the fifty notable works of fiction of 2017 by The Washington Post. Like a Sword Wound is the winner of the prestigious Yunus Nadi Novel Prize in Turkey. Brendan Freely was born in Princeton, NJ in 1959 and studied psychology at Yale University. He has been working as a freelance literary translator since 2004, and has translated over twenty books. He is also co-author, with John Freely, of Galata, Pera, Beyoğlu: A Biography about the social history, architecture, and topography of the Beyoğlu district of Istanbul.