Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar Book order (chronological)

Heralded as the Turkish Ulysses, A Mind at Peace is a lyrical tribute to the beautiful city of Istanbul, set on the eve of WWII. Tanpinar memorably captures the anxieties of a cosmopolitan Istanbul family during the early years of the Turkish Republic, founded on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923. Both a historical novel and a love story, it addresses issues of language, music, tradition, politics and modernity and has received Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk's highest compliment as 'the greatest novel ever written about Istanbul'.

This is the story of the misadventures of Hayri Irdals, an unforgettable antihero who, along with an eccentric cast of characters (a television mystic, a pharmacist who dabbles in alchemy, a dignitary from the lost Ottoman empire, the 'life-artist' Halit), founds The Time Regulation Institute. The institute's quixotic quest: to make sure all the clocks in Turkey are set to Western time. Thus begins a brilliant satire about the calamitous arrival of Western and corporate values in tradition-bound Turkey.