A Useless Man: Selected Stories

(Paperback)

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Description

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.

Reviews

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 momentshere one about milk, there one about deathopen 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 ones tellingintimate and mysterious, earthy and luminousis propelled universal by a striking glimpse of the human heart. Set in post-Ottoman Istanbul, Sait Faiks 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 Faiks unflinching eye lands us precisely in our own backyard.

Anne Germanacos

"Sait Faiks 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, Hrriyet 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

Author Bio

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.