Sait Faik

Sait Faik Abasiyanik

öykü

Lüzumsuz adam

Semaver

Sait Faik Abasıyanık

Alemdağʼda var bir yılan

Son kuşlar

Mahalle kahvesi

roman

Birtakım insanlar

Öykü

Sarnıç

Medarı maişet motoru

Şahmerdan

Kayıp aranıyor

Havada Bulut

Kumpanya

Medari maiset motoru

Havuz başı

Sait Faik Abasiyanik wrote 12 books of short stories, two novels and a book of poetry. Many stories are loosely autobiographical and deal with his frustration with social convention, the relentless pace of westernisation, and the slow but steady ethnic cleansing of his city. His fluid surfaces might seem to be in keeping with restrictions that the architects of the new Republic placed on language and culture, but the truth lies in their dark undercurrents. He is still greatly revered and this collection brings together some of his greatest works.

Selected Stories

A Useless Man

Sait Faik may well be named "the Turkish Chekhov." In Turkey, critics and readers regard him as their finest short story writer. Since his death in 1954 at the age of forty-eight, his stature has grown on the strength of his narrative art, which is both realistic and whimsical with a poetic touch. Süha Oguzertem, a premier authority on Turkish fiction, writes in his introduction to Sleeping in the Forest that "As an anti-bourgeois writer and fierce democrat, Sait Faik has always sided with the underdog" and that no characters remain " 'common' or 'ordinary' once they enter Sait Faik's stories; his piercing gaze and thoughtful vision transform them lovingly into unique beings." Sait Faik's fiction ranges from the realistic to the surrealistic, from the romantic to the modern, from the cynical to the compassionate. With virtuosic skill, he captures the spirit and the spleen of the city of Istanbul and its environs. In evoking the mystery of that great metropolis through such ordinary characters as Armenian fishermen, Greek Orthodox priests, and the disillusioned and disfranchised, he creates for us a marvelous microcosm of tragicomedy. Few writers, in Turkey or elsewhere, command Sait Faik's mastery of the ironic. Sleeping in the Forest features twenty-two stories, an excerpt from a novella, and fifteen poems rendered into English by some of the best-known translators of Turkish literature. Sait Faik's chiaroscuro world is brought into focus by an introductory essay on utopian poetics and lyrical stylistics of this great Turkish writer. The book is a stimulating exploration into Turkish mood and milieu.

Sait Faik

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