Akif Pirinçci

Akif Pirinçci
Akif Pirinçci in 2014
Born	(1959-10-20) 20 October 1959 Istanbul, Turkey
Occupation	Novelist, screenwriter
Nationality	German
Ethnicity	Turkish
Subject	Murder mystery, thriller, crime fiction, detective
Notable works	Felidae

Akif Pirinçci (German pronunciation: [aˈkif ˈpiːʁɪntʃi], Turkish pronunciation: [ɑˈcif pirint͡ʃˈd͡ʒi]; born 20 October 1959) is a German writer of Turkish origin who is best known internationally for his novel Felidae.

Biography

Pirinçci was born on 20 October 1959 in Istanbul, Turkey, but emigrated to Germany together with his parents in 1969. He began to write fiction at a young age, and published his first novel Tränen sind immer das Ende ("tears are always the end") in 1980, at the age of 21. His next literary work, published in 1989, was the novel Felidae, a work of crime fiction with cats as the main protagonists. The novel has been translated into 17 languages and became an international bestseller.

Due to the enormous success of the novel, Pirinçci expanded his concept of "cat crime fiction" and published several sequels to Felidae, out of which Felidae II and Felidae V (Salve Roma!) have been translated into English. An animated movie based on Felidae, the script of which had been co-written by Pirinçci, was produced in Germany in 1994, and was also dubbed in English.

Pirinçci has published several other novels which were not set in the fictional world of the Felidae series – however, none of those works have reached such a high degree of popularity. Lately, however, he had some success with the thriller "The Back Door", which was adapted for the screen in Germany, with Mads Mikkelsen ("Casino Royale") in the leading role. "The Back Door" is the only standalone novel of Pirinçci's that has been translated into English.

Pirinçci currently lives in Bonn in Germany.

Controversies

Political essays

Pirinçci began to become an increasingly controversial writer when around 2012 he began publishing non-fiction essays that were perceived as increasingly homophobic, racist, Islamophobic, misogynistic, anti-feminist, in online blogs, on Facebook, and in right-wing newspapers such as Junge Freiheit, eigentümlich frei, and Sezession, where observers consider him to join other controversial writers, especially Thilo Sarrazin and his book Deutschland schafft sich ab (2010, "Germany Is Abolishing Itself"), while radicalizing their views and expressing them in more vulgar terms.

Pirinçci's populist essays were collected in the two books Deutschland von Sinnen - Der irre Kult um Frauen, Homosexuelle und Zuwanderer (2014, "Germany Insane: The crazy cult of women, homosexuals, and immigrants", the title itself an obvious nod to Sarrazin's book), and Die große Verschwulung – Wenn aus Männern Frauen werden und aus Frauen keine Männer (2015, "The Big Gayification: How men become women while women can't be men"), both published by the retail company Manufactum, as part of Edition Sonderweg edited by André F. Lichtschlag, the publisher and editor-in-chief of eigentümlich frei and a writer for Junge Freiheit.

Relations to right-wing organisations

While writing and publishing these non-fiction essays, Pirinçci also increasingly came in contact with functionaries of the anti-Islamic movement Pegida, the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany, and the small right-wing German Freedom Party, who organized lecture tours where Pirinçci would read from his two political essay books. When he faced criticism in May 2014, he justified these contacts by telling the press, "I don't give a flying fuck if people call me a Nazi, I don't give a damn." ("Es geht mir am Arsch vorbei, wenn man mich einen Nazi nennt, das ist mir scheißegal").

Defamation suit

On 20 January 2015, the local paper General-Anzeiger reported that Pirinçci had been convicted of defamation in a civil suit brought by a professor of sociology and biology, whom Pirinçci had described as a "mentally sick, manic queer with a screw loose" ("geisteskranken, durchgeknallten Schwulen mit Dachschaden"). Pirinçci had also described the professor's theories as a "jewel of stupidity" ("Juwel der Doofheit").

19 October 2015 Pegida speech

At the first anniversary of the Pegida protests in Dresden on 19 October 2015, Pirinçci was invited as keynote speaker. He accused German politicians of being "Gauleiter against their own people" and called Germany a "shit state" ("Scheißstaat"). Further, according to Pirinçci, Muslims want to "pump infidels full of their Muslim juice" ("Ungläubige mit ihrem Moslemsaft vollpumpen") and Germany awaits a "Muslim garbage dump" ("Moslemmüllhalde"). He called the German Green Party a "Party of child fuckers" ("Kinderfickerpartei"), and the spokesperson for the mosque in Erfurt a "Muslim freak with a Taliban beard" ("Moslemfritzen mit Talibanbart"), who had as much to do with German culture as "my asshole with the production of perfume" ("wie mein Arschloch mit Parfümherstellung").

However, the most-widely spread quote from Pirinçci's 19 October speech was, "Unfortunately, the concentration camps are out of order at the moment!" ("Aber die KZs sind ja leider derzeit außer Betrieb!"), whereupon he even received applause from the crowd. In a wider context (albeit with a few rhetorical pauses and often involuntarily interrupted by the crowd), Pirinçci's concentration camps statement was meant as such that he accused critics of Pegida of intending to send Pegida members to said concentration camps. Pirinçci's remarks were apparently deemed too offensive by the crowd, and was booed off the stage.

Within 24 hours after first quotes from Pirinçci's Pegida speech appeared in the media, his publishers Goldmann and Random House issued statements that they had cancelled their contracts with Pirinçci and would no longer sell any of his books, and the webmaster to his online blog also cancelled Pirinçci's contract. At the same time, Amazon Germany chose to de-list his books so they can't be found through searches or ordered through the website. A few days later, the remaining large book store chains in Germany, Libri, Umbreit, and KNV, also stopped to comply to orders of any of his books, and many independent bookstores issues statements that they would refuse to order his books, even upon request. Volker Beck, member of parliament for the German Green Party, filed charges against Pirinçci for public incitement to criminal acts and incitement to hatred. A spokesperson for the federal prosecutor's office confirmed that an investigation is ongoing.

Two weeks after his Pegida speech, Pirinçci told Der Spiegel that the cessation of the selling of all his books overnight (except for the two political essays collections at Manufactum) as well as his public notoriety resulting from the affair made him seriously consider emigration.

List of literary works

• Tränen sind immer das Ende (1980)
• Felidae (German: Felidae) (1989)
• Der Rumpf (literally meaning "the torso") (1992)
• Felidae II aka Felidae on the Road (German: Francis. Felidae II) (1993)
• Felidae animated movie (script) (1994)
• Yin (1997)
• Cave Canem. Felidae III (1999)
• Die Damalstür (literally meaning "the door to back then" (2001)
• Das Duell. Felidae IV ("the duel") (2002)
• Salve Roma! Felidae V (2004)
• Der letzte Weltuntergang: Krimi-Erzählungen ("The Final Apocalypse") (2007)
• Schandtat Felidae VI (2007)
• Felipolis Felidae VII (2010)
• The Back Door (2011)
• Göttergleich Felidae VIII (2014)

List of non-fiction works

• Cat Sense (2011)
• Deutschland von Sinnen: Der irre Kult um Frauen, Homosexuelle und Zuwanderer (2014) Germany is going mad: The crazy cult about women, homosexuals and migrants.

External links

• Akif Pirinçci's Official Web Site (no longer operating as per 20 October 2015)