Akif Pirinçci ([piːʁɪntʃi]; 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 (literally meaning "tears always are 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, has been produced in Germany in 1994, and was also dubbed in English.

Pirinçci has published several other novels which were not set in the fictional reality 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 Royal") in the leading role. "The Back Door" is the only standalone novel of Akif Pirinçci that has been translated into English.

Lately Pirinçci has come under critique because of gloss he wrote for the libertarian political Web blog Die Achse des Guten of many considered racist, where he comes out saying that Arabs and Turks kill German men but only rape German women due to evolutionary reasons, something that was also reposted by the scandinavian Islam critical paper Dispatch-International.

Pirinçci currently lives in Bonn in the Federal Republic of Germany.