Şule Gürbüz

Şule Gürbüz — Biography

Şule Gürbüz was born in 1974 in Istanbul. She graduated from Istanbul University's Faculty of Letters, department of art history, in 1994, and later studied philosophy at the University of Cambridge. In 1997 she joined the Dolmabahçe Palace as an art historian; finding that most of the palace's clocks no longer worked, she asked to apprentice under Recep Gürgen, the master craftsman who occasionally came to repair them, and learned the intricacies of mechanical clock repair from him.

Together with Gürgen she founded Turkey's first and only clock museum, opened on 26 September 2003 in the inner treasury building of Dolmabahçe Palace. She still works as a mechanical clock repairer at the Clock Restoration Workshop of the Directorate of National Palaces, and keeps a personal collection of around 35 clocks. Also trained in music at a conservatory and able to play the cello and the church organ, she has said she avoids computers and electronics and does not use the internet or social media.

As a writer she began with the novel Kambur (1992), followed by early works such as Ağrıyınca Kar Yağıyor and Ne Yaştadır Ne Başta Akıl Yoktur. Her short-story collection Zamanın Farkında (2011) won the Oğuz Atay Story Award, and her book on clocks, Saat Kitabı, received the Writers' Union of Turkey's Public Publishing Award. She is known for a distinctive, Sufi-inflected style in later works including Coşkuyla Ölmek, Öyle miymiş? (2016) and Kıyamet Emeklisi (2022).