4.0
Waiting for the Fear
ByPublisher Description
Short stories about people on the margins, from story peddlers to beggars, by one of Turkey's most innovative fiction writers, now in a new English translation.
A giant of modern Turkish literature, Oğuz Atay remains largely untranslated into English. First published in 1975, Waiting for the Fear is Atay's only collection of short stories, praised by the Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk for having transformed the art of short fiction.
Atay's stories are vivid with life's absurdities and psychologically true to life, while his characters, oddballs and losers all, are utterly individual. A brilliant examiner of the inner life, Atay is no less aware of the flawed social world in which his people struggle to make their way, and he is exceptionally attuned to the strange power storytelling itself can exert over fate. In the title story, a nameless young man returns to his home on the outskirts of an enormous nameless city to discover that he has received a letter in a language he neither knows nor recognizes—after which, step by step, the inscrutable missive reshapes his world. In "Railroad Storytellers: A Dream," a professional story peddler lives in a hut beside a train station in a country that is at war—unless it isn't. He can't remember. What do such life and death realities matter, however, so long as there are stories to tell?
Ralph Hubbell's fluent and vigorous English rendering of this key work of world literature is a revelation.
A giant of modern Turkish literature, Oğuz Atay remains largely untranslated into English. First published in 1975, Waiting for the Fear is Atay's only collection of short stories, praised by the Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk for having transformed the art of short fiction.
Atay's stories are vivid with life's absurdities and psychologically true to life, while his characters, oddballs and losers all, are utterly individual. A brilliant examiner of the inner life, Atay is no less aware of the flawed social world in which his people struggle to make their way, and he is exceptionally attuned to the strange power storytelling itself can exert over fate. In the title story, a nameless young man returns to his home on the outskirts of an enormous nameless city to discover that he has received a letter in a language he neither knows nor recognizes—after which, step by step, the inscrutable missive reshapes his world. In "Railroad Storytellers: A Dream," a professional story peddler lives in a hut beside a train station in a country that is at war—unless it isn't. He can't remember. What do such life and death realities matter, however, so long as there are stories to tell?
Ralph Hubbell's fluent and vigorous English rendering of this key work of world literature is a revelation.
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4.0
Sarah Cao
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Onebookatatime
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“Proclaimed to be one of the most influential Turkish writers and decided to finally read something by him! This collection explores the lonely depths of isolation and how dead ends can be explored. Originally published in 1975 and finally a couple years ago this was finally translated to English and got a copy. These are all modernist shorts and I fully admit, l'm not the best in the realm either. What I love about this is how it's experimental within a normal narrative style- goes on random rifts, the unreliable character, dense streams of consciousness.
This book opens with an introduction that states it's "one of the crowning achievements of Turkish literature" and Atay sadly died at the age of 43. This collection also focuses on the "oddballs" in the societal/self lens of critical thought. The book itself is little uneven because of how these shorts were published separately but in the end it's fine. His character work is gruff and bold and reminded me of Nabokov— telling characters insights through normal first person but also adds epistolary writing which I have always loved this format cause it's another depth into a mind of a character. Atay is all business here with this one and yes the characters are rigid and the nihilism, spewing of unwarranted confessions and anger builds a wall of modernism.
My favorites from the collection are The Forgotten, Title story, Wooden Horse and Letter to my Father. The title story (Waiting For The Fear) specifically is something everyone should seek out! I'm so glad I finally got to a couple Atay stories and I recommend to read these as taste testers and enjoy slowly! Giving Waiting For The Fear a 4/5!
"On my way home last night the dogs started barking at my back. The neighborhood dogs. Then a few of them began to follow me; I walked faster. I'd never seen them behave that way before; I was scared. They tended to glance at me with lazy eyes, although I can't say I never sensed a tension between us." - Oguz Atay”
Ramin Skibba
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Jenny Lee
Created 5 months agoShare
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About Oguz Atay
Oğuz Atay (1934–1977) was a Turkish modernist writer. His experimental, linguistically complex novels earned him a reputation as one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century Turkish literature and a pioneer of the modern Turkish novel. He published two novels in the 1970s, The Disconnected and Dangerous Games, and wrote several other short stories and plays.
Ralph Hubbell is a translator of Turkish literature and writer. His fiction, essays, and translations have appeared in the Sun Magazine, Words Without Borders, Los Angeles Review of Books, Tin House’s Lost & Found, Asymptote, and elsewhere. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland, where he works as the senior program coordinator in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Johns Hopkins University.
Merve Emre is the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University and the Director of the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism. Her books include Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America, The Personality Brokers, The Ferrante Letters, and The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway. She has been awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize, the Robert B. Silvers Prize for Literary Criticism, and the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing by the National Book Critics Circle. She is a contributing writer at The New Yorker and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books.
Ralph Hubbell is a translator of Turkish literature and writer. His fiction, essays, and translations have appeared in the Sun Magazine, Words Without Borders, Los Angeles Review of Books, Tin House’s Lost & Found, Asymptote, and elsewhere. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland, where he works as the senior program coordinator in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Johns Hopkins University.
Merve Emre is the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University and the Director of the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism. Her books include Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America, The Personality Brokers, The Ferrante Letters, and The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway. She has been awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize, the Robert B. Silvers Prize for Literary Criticism, and the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing by the National Book Critics Circle. She is a contributing writer at The New Yorker and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books.
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