In this parallel Turkish-English text are three hilarious, satirical short stories translated by Damian Croft. These take the mickey out of bureaucracy and political ideology and hypocrisy. The first, a comic fable, shows how the gullible narrator is conned by two unscrupulous crooks. They persuade him to join them in their scam to fleece local business men into paying them to keep the threat of socialism at bay. They convince him that since ‘All rich people are frightened of socialism’ they will be keen to fund a non-existent magazine in defence of private enterprise and capital. At first, all goes well and they pick up donations but very soon it all goes pear-shaped as the business men see through their antics and take up socialism themselves. The narrator is conned by the crooks and ends up with nothing.

In the second story, The Inspector’s Coming, a civil service office that has been carefully avoiding notice gets a new director who frightens the workers out of their inertia by tricking them into believing that they are about to receive an inspection.

In the final tale, The Lunatics Break Loose , set in an imaginary Turkish city, Aristontopolis, the state radio broadcasts that fifty inmates have escaped from the city’s largest mental hospital. The lunatics take over the city administration and gradually switch places with the administrators of the city. Surprisingly, no one can tell the difference between the sane and lunatic versions. Eventually the lunatics retire to the asylum in search of some sanity! These are thought provoking parables of our time which should leave readers laughing and thinking.

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