At its center is Hayri Irdal, an infectiously charming antihero who becomes entangled with an eccentric cast of characters--a television mystic, a pharmacist who dabbles in alchemy, a dignitary from the lost Ottoman Empire, a "clock whisperer"--at the Time Regulation Institute, a vast organization that employs a hilariously intricate system of fines for the purpose of changing all the clocks in Turkey to Western time. Recounted in sessions with his psychoanalyst, the story of Hayri Irdal's absurdist misadventures plays out as a brilliant allegory of the collision of tradition and modernity, of East and West, infused with a poignant blend of hope for the promise of the future and nostalgia for a simpler time.

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