Sait Faik's career marked a pivotal moment in Turkish culture in
the 1930s and 40s when the secular, post-Ottoman sensibility placed
new demands on the writing of literature. Born in Adapazari in
1906, Sait Faik is regarded by Turkish critics and readers as their
finest short story writer - a Turkish Chekhov.
Alex Dawe has translated Tanpinar's The Time Regulation Institute,
for which he won a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant.
Maureen Freely is a writer, translator, senior lecturer at Warwick
University, and the former president of English PEN. The translator
of books by Orhan Pamuk and Fethiye Cetin, she actively champions
free expression. She has been a regular contributor to The
Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, and The Sunday Times for
two decades. Her translation of Sevgi Soysal's Dawn is forthcoming
from Archipelago.
Brimming with life and intelligence…. Sait Faik is a masterful
storyteller and a passionate flaneur. He has the keenest eye and
the softest heart for quirkiness, loneliness and love. It feels
like nothing can surprise him and yet his writing is utterly
riveting and full of surprises.
— Elif Shafak
Reading these stories by Sait Faik feels like finding the secret
doors inside of poems. Little moments–here one about milk, there
one about death–open out into corridors of narrative, leading to
effects and endings that are consistently both gentle and cutting,
simultaneously honest and surprising. A distinctive, humane voice
worthy of our serious attention.
— Rivka Galchen
Turkey's greatest short-story writer.
— The Guardian
These stories unfold like secrets or hallowed gossip passed between
friends and neighbors. Each one’s telling—intimate and mysterious,
earthy and luminous—is propelled universal by a striking glimpse of
the human heart. Set in post-Ottoman Istanbul, Sait Faik’s
characters span a rich cultural array, including Turkish fishmen,
Greek Orthodox priests, factory girls, thieves, simit sellers and
all manner of lovers. Though these stories take us to a specific
place and time, Sait Faik’s unflinching eye lands us precisely in
our own backyard.
— Anne Germanacos
"Sait Faik’s best stories combine...innocence with a profound
intelligence, showing that people also bring sadness,
disappointment, rivalry, frustration and confusion. He should
certainly be better known among English readers and this volume is
a good place to start... His work is full of humanistic
portrayals of laborers, fishermen, children, tradesmen, the
unemployed, the poor...one of the best loved writers in Turkey."
— William Armstrong, Hürriyet Daily News
"Part of the charm of Sait Faik Abasiyanik, who wrote almost 200
short stories in two decades before his premature death in 1954, is
the way he floated above the fray of his turbulent times. This new
selection of tales is welcome.... His stories bear multiple
readings... they are elliptical, fragmentary, defined mostly by
what is left unsaid; they never outstay their welcome.... 'The
Silk Handkerchief' [is] a poignant masterpiece of concision." — The
Times Literary Supplement
"It's heartbreaking and tender.... Masterly storytelling,
beautifully translated." — The Irish Times
"[S]uperbly translated. . . evocative and nostalgic without ever
being saccharine. . . Like quality chocolates, each story is worth
pausing over to savor the nuances, wondering about the hints and
where they lead. . . Elliptical and unexpected, sometimes lyrical,
sometimes earthy, using elementary language and a stark, Chekhovian
simplicity, these loving tributes to the unnoticed loners on the
margins of life reveal the world through Sait Faik's eyes in all
its brutality and loneliness and beauty." --Nick DiMartino,
University Book Store, in Shelf Awareness
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