The Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar (Penguin Classics, 2013)

More than fifty years after its publication in Turkey and its author’s death, the 400-page novel The Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar is available in English for the first time. Let me start by praising its translators, Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe, who, judging from the novel’s intricate content and stylistic complexity, have had to overcome tremendous difficulties, and have done it brilliantly. This novel is a masterpiece not only in Turkish, but also in English, which means that the translators deserve as much praise as the original author.

Because of its numerous subplots, it’s very hard to summarize this novel, but let me try: at the beginning, the narrator, Hayri Irdal, reveals that his life has taken a different turn when he met “his benefactor,” Halit Ayarci, and became associated with the “Time Regulation Institute.” After this revelation, the narrative switches back to the narrator’s childhood. As a child, he was fascinated with watches and clocks, and was lucky enough to learn everything about them from one of those wise men of humble origins that any neighborhood used to have in the old days: Nuri Efendi. The descriptions of various types of watches and clocks are among the most beautiful pages in the book, lyrical and funny at the same time, infused with nostalgia for outmoded mechanics/technology and insights on different views of time. The grandfather clock that the narrator’s family owns, ironically called “the Blessed One,” plays an important part—among other things, it serves as a virtual prop when the narrator undergoes psychoanalysis with Dr. Ramiz.

How did Hayri—a poor, simple man—come to be psychoanalyzed? Well, he was taken to court because he was accused of having stolen a diamond (a diamond that didn’t really exist) and in order to determine whether or not he was sane, the court sent him to a doctor, who, as luck would have it, had studied in Vienna. It was Dr. Ramiz who later introduced Hayri to his circle of friends in a bohemian café, and through some of them Hayri became involved with the “Spiritualist Society.” Although Tanpinar satirizes these circles and fads that were fashionable in the first half of the twentieth century in Europe, the satire is colorful and humorous, and the people described are very charming; far from being moralized, the reader is drawn into a magical world.

The “Time Regulation Institute” is the creation of Halit Ayarci, the prototype of the modern man who believes that work necessarily takes places in an office and that anyone who performs “real work” has, or should have, a modern (that is, “regulated”) vision of time. Western readers may not necessarily recognize in this institute an allegory of bureaucratic societies, especially since its hundreds of employees don’t do anything (as absurd as modern societies may be, they do appreciate one thing: efficiency!). Every once in a while some important official (such as the mayor) drops by to visit this important institute whose function is to make sure that all the watches and clocks in the city are set properly. It should be added, though, that the satire (or allegory, as some critics have called it) is very complex, and that Tanpinar is too good a writer to give us simply a black and white image. He is a master stylist, and The Time Regulation Institute is one of the most beautifully written and interesting novels of mid-twentieth-century (when it was first published).