Firat Sunel is a Turkish diplomat, lawyer, scriptwriter, and author born in Ödemis in Western Anatolia to a family with immigrant roots. Sunel’s parents moved to Germany as Gastarbeitern when he was five. He studied law at Istanbul University and did his postgraduate 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 Salkim Sögütlerin Gölgesinde [In the Shade of the Weeping Willows, 2011] which inspired a TV series called Büyük Sürgün Kafkasya [The Great Exile Caucasia], Izmirli [Izmirli, My Last Love, 2015] and Sarpincik 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.
Keepers of the lonely lighthouse at Türkiye’s westernmost tip watch in horror as the Second World War sets the Aegean on fire.
Little K feels the weight of the world as he struggles with his desire to go to the city school or help look after the lighthouse as only he can. But his brother Ilyas finds a saintly courage in his limp bones and his sister Feriha becomes the strength of their spine.
While K ploughed the field in the mornings, Ilyas’ learnt the lessons in daylight to help K learn in the flickering beam of the lighthouse; knowing very well that’s the closest he’ll ever get to school. Feriha guarded the lighthouse; knowing she might be the only answer to their struggles. Their aunt Hanim Hala chanted around the mastic tree planted as a sapling: the soul of the home they left behind.
How does their happiest morning turn into an endless night, how does a family with little to do beyond the lighthouse get ripped apart by a war that was not even theirs?
As K says “…I [‘ve] realized that emptiness was the worst thing that could fill you.”
The K that grows up from that is an answer to the world that forgets about kindness in its endless pursuit of power. An emotional and warm story reminding us of the need to rise for our children, the world’s children and to protect their dreams.
