The Mosaic Rooms and Archipelago are delighted to present the launch of A Useless Man (English translation), a collection of autobiographical and highly symbolic stories from renowned Turkish author Sait Faik Abasiyanik.

A Useless Man is a collection of short stories translated by Maureen Freely, acclaimed author, journalist and senior lecturer at Warwick University and President of English PEN. Freely will be in conversation with award-winning cultural journalist and writer Maya Jaggi.

Sait Faik Abasiyanik has written 12 books of short stories, two novels, and a book of poetry. His stories celebrate the natural world and trace the plight of iconic characters in society: ancient coffeehouse proprietors and priests, dream-addled fishermen and poets of the Princes’ Isles, lovers and wandering minstrels of another time. Many stories are loosely autobiographical and deal with Sait Faik’s frustration with social convention, the relentless pace of westernisation, and the slow but steady ethnic cleansing of his city. His fluid, limpid surfaces might seem to be in keeping with the restrictions that the architects of the new Republic placed on language and culture, but the truth lies in their dark, subversive undercurrents.

FREE, rsvp@mosaicrooms.org