He will be their messiah, at whose second coming they will change places with the comfortable of the world. Under layers of fantasy is the central concept of the Disconnected, tutunamayanlar, literally ‘those who cannot hold on’, poor souls among whom he counts himself, whose sole virtue is that they do not fit into society as it is constituted. He meets friends whom Selim had kept separate from each other, he finds documents in a kaleidoscopic variety of styles, sometimes hugely funny, sometimes very moving, as Selim rails against the ugliness of his world whether in satire or in a howl of anguish, taking refuge in words and loneliness. But the game has a terrible end with his suicide, and his friend Turgut’s quest to understand this is the story of the book. “My life was a game, but I wanted it to be taken seriously,” says Selim, the anti-hero of the novel. Since it was reprinted in 1984 it has gone through more than 70 editions, and is widely reckoned to be the most important book in modern Turkish literature. First published in 1972 it was a cult book among younger writers, but he never saw a second printing before his premature death. The Disconnected was the first book of Oguz Atay (1934-1977), and was before its time. Olric Press is pleased to announce for its first publication a major work in the canon of world literature.
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