The Character of the “Unreliable Narrator” in Ahmet Ümit’s Novel “To Kill the Sultan”

Using the example of the novelistic work of the famous modern Turkish writer Ahmet Ümit, the paper examines one of the most common literary characters of detective literature — the character of an “unreliable narrator”. The purpose of the work is to study this character in compositional and plot terms using the example of Ahmet Ümit’s novel “Kill the Sultan” (2012). The goal is determined by the following tasks: To show the milestones in the development of the Turkish detective story, of which the 1990s stand out as determining in the formation of the main paradigmatic features of the genre; trace the creative biography of Ahmet Ümit; show the place of reception of the “unreliable narrator” and the associated image in the writer’s novelism; study the plot of the novel “Kill the Sultan” to prove that the central character of the novel is the character of the “unreliable narrator” Mushtaq Bey, described with psychological depth. In conclusion, it is surmised that the image of the “unreliable narrator,” which, according to the writer’s plan, is constantly “stratified” into a criminal-victim and a criminal-detective, performs an innovative function in Ahmet Ümit’s work. He does not trivialize, but problematizes the novel’s action, filling the detective intrigue with deep psychologism. For the first time, the Turkish mass reader is presented with the image of a reflective intellectual trying to self-determinate, that is, to answer the question “Who am I really?”