Mutfak Çıkmazı is Tahsin Yücel’s first novel, published in 1960. Initially designed as a novella, the work was expanded and transformed into a novel. Under the influence of Western existentialist thought, which permeated our literature and impacted writers during the 1950s and 1960s, authors began to produce works that emphasized the individual’s inner world rather than societal themes. The existentialist interpretation of art has resulted in the prominence of themes such as despair, anxiety, conflict, alienation, and a sense of disconnection in literature. Tahsin Yücel, whose works deal with little people who have lost their sense of belonging, are conflicted, depressed, and alienated from their own identity, and who search for a new “I”, can be counted among the writers who write within the framework of the existentialist understanding of art. Yücel’s Mutfak Çıkmazı captivates by narrating the tale of a little people who experiences change and transition in his journey, characterized by depression, inner turmoil, societal alienation, and a diminished sense of belonging. The present study analyzed Tahsin Yücel’s sense of art and the little people character he created in his first novel, Mutfak Çıkmazı, through elements such as conflict, alienation, obsession and lack of belonging, which can also be associated with existentialist literature.

Tahsin Yücel, Mutfak Çıkmazı, little people, alienation, conflict.