Synopses & Reviews
Oğuz Atay (1934-1977), one of the most influential figures of 20th century Turkish literature, was not only a writer and a professor, but also a civil engineer. Aside from his widely acclaimed novels, in this book of collected stories, Atay engineers the language of a historically multilayered society that was in the midst of a cultural and political transition. By smoothly mending the autobiographical and the fictional, he invites the reader into a maze of seamlessly shifting narrative voices.
Atay cracks the walls constructed over time between singular and plural pronouns, between the rather ambiguous victims and victors of each story. Without merely trying to impose pity for the 'other, ' he traces the existential conflicts of different 'selves' struggling to survive, and peels away the layers of each isolated and alienated persona, while standing at an equally critical distance to the social stratifications each layer signifies. Atay's lingual precision in short-circuiting familiar processes of reasoning and memory within the daily flow of time, along with his dark, yet highly ironic tone in dismantling the edifices of social norms call to mind writers such as Dostoevsky, Kafka, and Joyce.
This is the first translation of Waiting for Fear into English.
Review
"Fulya Peker's masterly translation brings the complexities of Oğuz Atay's deeply ironic, multilayered, parodic, polyphonic text to English with a clear sympathy to the source text, and displays a deep understanding of what Atay was trying to achieve in Turkish." Armağan Ekici, author of Lacivert Taşından Tabletler
About the Author
Oğuz Atay was a pioneer of the modern novel in Turkey. His first novel, Tutunamayanlar (The Disconnected), appeared in 1971-72. It has been described as probably the most eminent novel of twentieth-century Turkish literature. He wrote several plays, short-stories, and a biography. He died of a brain tumor before he could complete his final great project Türkiye'nin Ruhu (The Spirit of Turkey).