The time regulation institute

About “The time regulation institute”

The Time Regulation Institute is a tragicomedy of modernization, first translated into English more than fifty years after its initial publication. Written by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, the novel follows Hayri Irdal, an antihero involved with the Time Regulation Institute, a bureaucratic organization that enforces a system of fines to change all clocks in Turkey to Western time. The story features eccentric characters, including a television mystic, a pharmacist who practices alchemy, a dignitary from the lost Ottoman Empire, and a "clock whisperer." Told through sessions with a psychoanalyst, the novel explores the collision of tradition and modernity, East and West, blending hope for modernity with nostalgia for the past.