When the eccentric Hayri İrdal and the visionary, hyper-capitalist Halit Ayarcı team up to create the "Time Regulation Institute," they unleash a bureaucratic monster. The goal? To ensure every public clock in the city is synchronized to the exact same second. The penalty for discrepancy? A fine calculated with exquisite, absurd mathematical precision.
First published in 1961, this landmark novel instantly revolutionized Turkish literature, establishing itself as a brilliant, fiercely intelligent masterpiece that stands to this day as one of the crown jewels of world fiction.
Through this dazzling premise, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar masterfully explores the bizarre, disorienting friction between traditional Ottoman life and the relentless march of Western modernization. It is a profound, thought-provoking examination of what happens when a society is forced to change its clocks before it is ready to change its mind. Wrapped in an intoxicating blend of Eastern mystique and Western modernism, the narrative unfolds with a rhythm that is as deeply philosophical as it is wildly, undeniably hilarious.
For the Western reader who loves the surreal wit of Franz Kafka, the labyrinthine satire of Nikolai Gogol, or the playful irony of Jorge Luis Borges, The Time Regulation Institute is the ultimate literary discovery—a glittering, fiercely funny comedy of absolute absurdity.
The new translation by Catherina Blake Arslan brilliantly captures the internal friction of a society caught between two worlds, shedding the academic stiffness of the past to transform Tanpınar’s complex, ironic masterpiece into an effortlessly fluid, laugh-out-loud joyful read for the modern audience.
