The Time Regulation Institute — Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

One of the greatest and most overlooked novels of the twentieth century by an author championed by Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk The Time Regulation Institute appears here in English for the first time more than fifty years after its original publication in Turkish This is the story of the misadventures of Hayri Irdals an unforgettable antihero who along with an eccentric cast of characters a television mystic a pharmacist who dabbles in alchemy a dignitary from the lost Ottoman empire the life artist Halit founds The Time Regulation Institute The institute s quixotic quest to make sure all the clocks in Turkey are set to Western time Thus begins a brilliant satire about the calamitous arrival of Western and corporate values in tradition bound Turkey An uproarious tragicomedy that is still startlingly relevant The Time Regulation Institute illuminates the collision of East and West tradition and modernity that has been playing out in Turkey since the early twentieth century AHMET HAMDI TANPINAR 1901 1962 was a poet short story writer novelist essayist literary historian and professor He is considered one of the most significant Turkish novelists of the 20th century Deeply influenced by Valery and Bergson he created a unique cultural universe in his work bringing together a European literary voice and the sensibilities of the East MAUREEN FREELY translator is the principal translator of Orhan Pamuk the Nobel Prize winning Turkish novelist She lives in England ALEXANDER DAWE translator is an American translator of French and Turkish He lives in Istanbul PANKAJ MISHRA introducer is an award winning novelist and essayist whose writing appears frequently in the New York Review of Books The Guardian and the London Review of Books He lives in London and India