Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

"Old İstanbul aristocrats, Turkish teashops, imperial diamonds, and great and humble mosques are juxtaposed with the almost non-descriptive portrayals of neighborhood friendships, family relations, and local public figures who could be found in any city in Turkey or, perhaps, any Eastern setting where the old way of life adopts new and Western counterparts. Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar's portrayal of modern, post-Ottoman Turkey weaves a theater of the absurd, suggestively representative of the early days of the young Republic."--Book jacket.

A Novel

The Time Regulation Institute

" A literary discovery: an uproarious tragicomedy of modernization, in its first-ever English translation. Perhaps the greatest Turkish novel of the twentieth century, being discovered around the world only now, more than fifty years after its first publication, The Time Regulation Institute is an antic, freewheeling send-up of the modern bureaucratic state. At its center is Hayri Irdal, an infectiously charming antihero who becomes entangled with an eccentric cast of characters-a television mystic, a pharmacist who dabbles in alchemy, a dignitary from the lost Ottoman Empire, a "clock whisperer"-at the Time Regulation Institute, a vast organization that employs a hilariously intricate system of fines for the purpose of changing all the clocks in Turkey to Western time. Recounted in sessions with his psychoanalyst, the story of Hayri Irdal's absurdist misadventures plays out as a brilliant allegory of the collision of tradition and modernity, of East and West, infused with a poignant blend of hope for the promise of modernity and nostalgia for a simpler time"--

The time regulation institute

Hafsa

Readers familiar with Orhan Pamuk will immediately recognise how he was influenced by Tanpinar's writing. Tanpinar could have easily written a straightforward criticism of the bureaucracy in his time but instead he chose to write a satire about society at the time. To understand this book some historical context is required and this book needs to be re-read. You realise how so many things we are now accustomed to were a drastic change in people's lives for example the quantification of time into minutes and hours made you more aware of wasting it whereas before people qualified time according to the daily prayers and it was okay to just not do anything. Tanpinar satirises both Turkish and Western cultures but does so in a way that's rational and subtle. The novel itself is hilarious in its absurdity and it resonates even today. Overall this is one of the best books of its kind and everyone should be required to read it.

The Time Regulation Institute A Novel

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