Time Regulation Institute PB (9780141195759)

‘Just as she was being lowered into the earth – following the late afternoon call to prayer – my aunt sprang briskly back to life’

In this fictional memoir of Hayri İrdal – troublesome boy, workshy man and feckless husband – life is examined in all its double-crossing, chaotic, disastrous glory. From his youth, dismantling timepieces while his family fell apart, to his later years at the scandal-hit Time Regulation Institute, Hayri’s absurdist misadventures play out as a brilliant allegory of the collision between East and West, tradition and modernity.

‘Not only entertaining and substantial but also, for lack of a better word, timely… Tanpınar’s elaborate bittersweet sendup of Turkish culture over a half-century ago speaks perfectly clearly to our own’ Martin Riker, The New York Times Book Review