Selected Stories & Poems by Sabahattin Ali

Translated by Aysel K Basci

By: Sabahattin Ali

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Selected Stories & Poems by Sabahattin Ali is a collection of thirteen short stories and ten poems by renowned Turkish author, poet, journalist, and intellectual Sabahattin Ali, which have been translated into English for the first time by Aysel K. Basci. Although Ali died 75 years ago, his stories, novels and poems remain very popular. The purpose of the book is to make Ali’s most compelling short stories and poems available to English-speaking readers around the world. The original Turkish versions of the stories and poems are also included in the book. The thirteen stories were selected based on their themes, which generally comprise fictionalized accounts of the struggle between two diametrically opposed social groups: the peasants, whom Ali depicts as affectionate or abused, and the intelligentsia, whom he sees as materialistic, corrupt, or idealistic. Such themes are very much in line with Ali's overall ideology.

Ayşe Papatya Bucak, an author and associate professor at Florida Atlantic University, writes:

"This new access to Ali’s short works feels like access to Turkey, to its history, and, for me, to my own family and my own history. Turkish translators, like Aysel Basci, have quite literally changed my life, my understanding of my life. I hope this book is equally transformative for other readers who can only know Turkey through translation.

"While, as a fiction writer, I insist that we not read Ali’s characters or narrators as him—it is impossible to ignore the echoes between Ali’s letters and his stories and poems. His characters, like him, are romantics, prisoners, artists, and more than anything, full of desperate longing.

"With this English translation of Sabahattin Ali’s stories and poems, so much more of the world can now hear the truth he has to tell. Let us shout it from the mountain tops and minarets."

About the author: Sabahattin Ali (1907-1948) was a prominent Turkish novelist, short-story writer, poet, journalist, and teacher. He was probably the most powerful and effective of the twentieth century short story writers in Turkey who addressed social themes. Although he died in 1948 at the age of forty-one, his writing and poetry remain very popular. Ali’s short novel, Madonna in A Fur Coat (1943), is considered one of the best novellas in Turkish literature. Almost 70 years after his death, this novel’s translations appeared on the bestseller lists and sold a record number of copies. With this novel, Sabahattin Ali became one of the two Turkish novelists whose works are published by Penguin Classics.

About the translator: Aysel K. Basci was born and raised in Cyprus. She came to the United States at age 19 to pursue higher education and ultimately settled there. She completed her undergraduate studies at American University and graduate studies at George Washington University, both located in Washington, DC. She subsequently worked for the World Bank Group for more than 25 years. Aysel is now a nonfiction writer and literary translator. Her writing and translations have appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review, Columbia Journal, Los Angeles Review, Critical Read, Aster(ix) Journal, Bosphorus Review of Books, and elsewhere.