The Time Regulation Institute

'Just as she was being lowered into the earth - following the late afternoon call to prayer - my aunt sprang briskly back to life.' In this fictional memoir of Hayri Irdal - troublesome boy, workshy man and feckless husband - life is examined in all its double-crossing, chaotic, disastrous glory. From his youth, dismantling timepieces while his family fell apart, to his later years at the scandal-hit Time Regulation Institute, Hayri's absurdist misadventures play out as a brilliant allegory of the collision between East and West, tradition and modernity. Translated by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe With an Introduction by Pankaj Mishra 'Not only entertaining and substantial but also, for lack of a better word, timely...Tanpinar's elaborate bittersweet sendup of Turkish culture over a half-century ago speaks perfectly clearly to our own.' Martin Riker, The New York Times Book Review