The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Turkish author Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar's 1962 classic, The Time Regulation Institute, just out from Penguin Classics.
It's great to see this book get the Penguin Classics treatment -- but I am shocked that they print even on the back cover (as well as in the publicity material they send out) the claim that this is:
Even a basic web search turns up a previous translation -- Ender Gürol's, under the same title, from 2001. Sure, Turko-Tatar Press is so small it barely even registers -- but I've held a copy of their edition in my hands, so it's not that obscure .....
I'm assuming it's not willful misrepresentation on the part of the Penguin juggernaut -- but it does not speak well for them that they overlooked this, either.
Still, a nice edition of the book -- and how can one not like a book with quotes such as:
It's great to see this book get the Penguin Classics treatment -- but I am shocked that they print even on the back cover (as well as in the publicity material they send out) the claim that this is:
An uproarious tragicomedy of modernization, in its first-ever English translation.Huh ?
Even a basic web search turns up a previous translation -- Ender Gürol's, under the same title, from 2001. Sure, Turko-Tatar Press is so small it barely even registers -- but I've held a copy of their edition in my hands, so it's not that obscure .....
I'm assuming it's not willful misrepresentation on the part of the Penguin juggernaut -- but it does not speak well for them that they overlooked this, either.
Still, a nice edition of the book -- and how can one not like a book with quotes such as:
Being a realist does not mean seeing the truth for what it is. It is a question of determining our relationship with the truth in the way that is most beneficial for us.Check it out for yourself.