Nedim Gürsel was born in Gaziantep, Turkey, in 1951. He published his first novellas and essays in Turkish literary magazines in the late 60s. After the coup d'état in 1971, he had to testify in court for one of his articles. This led to his decision to temporarily reside in France. He studied Comparative Literature at the Sorbonne in Paris and completed his dissertation in 1979 on Nazim Hikmet and Louis Aragon. Gürsel then returned to Turkey, but the military putsch of 1980 sent him back into exile in France. He first wrote articles and travel reports which were published in Le Monde, as well as in the Turkish newspapers Cumhuriyet and Milliyet. Today he teaches contemporary Turkish literature at the Sorbonne and directs the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
