Waiting for the Fear

“Astonishing, deeply wry … a collection of eight short stories by one of the most influential and inventive Turkish writers of the 20th century, Oguz Atay. These linguistically playful, slightly surreal stories, written in the 1970s, center on the down-and-out misfits and oddballs who struggle to connect with the rest of society.” —Ayten Tartici, The New York Times

“Turkish writer Atay makes his English-language debut with this alluring 1975 collection, sharply translated by Hubbell, of dreamlike fables and horror stories…. Devotees of modernist literature will be grateful for Atay’s hypnotic and intense writing.” —Publishers Weekly

“The eight exquisite stories in Waiting for the Fear are a perfect introduction to Oğuz Atay’s world.” —Oğuz Demiralp

“Much like a fire or a sinkhole, Atay himself was an unforgiving force of nature. Rejecting both the nostalgic allure of the past and the vacuous imitation of the present, his writing sought to transform the literary conventions of his era.” — Eamon Mcgrath, LARB

“This fear remains a defining feature of Turkish culture and politics…. I felt grateful to Atay for articulating its centrality and pervasiveness so many years ago.” -Kaya Genc, The Point

“Ralph Hubbell has succeeded marvelously in rendering the stream of consciousness of inner offbeat voices within the short stories of the great and notoriously difficult twentieth-century Turkish author Oğuz Atay. Waiting for the Fear is a series of Edgar Allen Poe–like terrors encompassing the psychological impact of modern society on different subjectivities, including underdogs and characters flirting with madness. Hubbell translates these stories in ways that capture both the complexities of Atay’s language as well as the various complexities of the Turkish language. Hubbell’s deep affinity for language and patient intimacy with Atay’s oeuvre come across with clarity and verve.” —MLA

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, Los Angeles Review of Books, Tin House, Asymptote, and elsewhere. He teaches at Loyola University Maryland and lives in Baltimore.

Merve Emre is the author or editor of several books, including Paraliterary- The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America, The Ferrante Letters, The Personality Brokers, and The Annotated Mrs. Dalloway. She is a contributing writer at The New Yorker and her essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, The Atlantic, The London Review of Books and many other publications. She teaches at Wesleyan University.

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