Almost 60 years after the author's death, the short stories of Turkish literary treasure Sait Faik Abasiyanik (who published as Sait Faik) have been superbly translated into natural, everyday English in A Useless Man: Selected Stories. In this sampler of 37 pieces from his 12 volumes of short works, Sait Faik trustingly confides his very personal tales to the reader in small, intimate constructions that can span an entire lifetime or capture a fleeting moment. His minimalist verbal delights--stream-of-consciousness monologues, elegiac prose-poems, love confessions, melancholy reflections--are evocative and nostalgic without ever being saccharine.
A man who never leaves the four streets of his neighborhood and hasn't bathed in seven years takes a fearful trip to the city in "A Useless Man." In "I Just Don't Know Why I Keep Doing These Things," an old hunchback loses his amber prayer beads in a coffeehouse and is convinced the narrator has stolen them. A man whom strangers always ask for help is approached by a newly employed illiterate man to read aloud lab results in "Four Pluses."
Often Sait Faik comments on his stories while writing them, and midway through a telling, he is not above considering a different topic for the story altogether, only to abandon the alternative and go back to his original plot. Elliptical and unexpected, sometimes lyrical, sometimes earthy, these loving tributes to the unnoticed loners on the margins of life reveal the world through Sait Faik's eyes in all its brutality and loneliness and beauty. --Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle, Wash.