With all the wit and brilliance of Chekhov, a distinctive collection of lyrical stories from Sait Faik Abas yan k, "Turkey's greatest short story writer" ( The Guardian ) Sait Faik Abas yan k's fiction traces the interior lives of strangers in his native Istanbul: ancient coffeehouse proprietors, priests, dream-addled fishermen, poets of the Princes' Isles, lovers and wandering minstrels of another time. The stories in A Useless Man are shaped by Sait Faik's political autobiography - his resistance to social convention ...
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With all the wit and brilliance of Chekhov, a distinctive collection of lyrical stories from Sait Faik Abas yan k, "Turkey's greatest short story writer" ( The Guardian ) Sait Faik Abas yan k's fiction traces the interior lives of strangers in his native Istanbul: ancient coffeehouse proprietors, priests, dream-addled fishermen, poets of the Princes' Isles, lovers and wandering minstrels of another time. The stories in A Useless Man are shaped by Sait Faik's political autobiography - his resistance to social convention, the relentless pace of westernization, and the ethnic cleansing of his city - as he conjures the varied textures of life in Istanbul and its surrounding islands. The calm surface of these stories might seem to signal deference to the new Republic's restrictions on language and culture, but Abas yan k's prose is crafted deceptively, with dark, subversive undercurrents. "Reading these stories by Sait Faik feels like finding the secret doors inside of poems," Rivka Galchen wrote. Beautifully translated by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe, A Useless Man is the most comprehensive collection of Sait Faik's stories in English to date.
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Brooklyn. 2014. Archipelago Books. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Slightly Worn Wrappers. 9780914671077. Translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe. 240 pages. paperback. Cover design by David Bullen. Cover art by Abidin Dino. keywords: Literature Translated Turkey. FROM THE PUBLISHER-Sait Faik Abas? yan? k was born in Adapazar? in 1906 and died in Istanbul in 1954. In twelve books of short stories, two novels, and a book of poetry, Sait Faik's prose celebrates the natural world and renders in vivid detail the struggles of his characters: ancient coffeehouse proprietors and priests, dream-addled fishermen and poets of the Princes' Isles, lovers and wandering minstrels of another time. Many stories are loosely autobiographically and deal with Sait Faik's frustration with social convention, the relentless pace of westernization, and the slow yet steady ethnic cleansing of his city. Seemingly in keeping with the restrictions that the new Republic placed on language and culture, the fluid, limpid surfaces of these tales craftily veil the deeper truths lying in their subversive undercurrents. Sait Faik is greatly revered to this day, lending his name to Turkey's most prestigious short story award. Nearly every Turk knows by heart a line or a story by Sait Faik. inventory #41698.
