Waiting for the Fear

Turkish writer Atay (1934–1977) makes his English-language debut with this alluring 1975 collection, sharply translated by Hubbell, of dreamlike fables and horror stories. Each entry, several of which take the form of letters, brims with longing for human connection and is packed with parenthetical asides that lay bare their narrators’ fears of being misunderstood. In “A Letter,” a newspaper advice columnist shares (with his own interjections) a deranged letter he’s received from a man who has fallen obsessively in love. In the brief but tense “The Forgotten,” a woman finds her ex-boyfriend dead in her attic, which leads to a deeper, weirder excavation of her memories. In “Railway Storytellers—a Dream,” three people live near a train station in the middle of nowhere, a setting that feels out of time, and sell stories they’ve written to passengers. In the mesmerizing title novella, a man receives a letter that feels threatening, though it’s in a language he can’t understand. As he explores its meaning, the letter’s contents begin to derail his life, and its consequences sever his connection to the real world and the other people around him. Devotees of modernist literature will be grateful for Atay’s hypnotic and intense writing. (Sept.)