Ahmed Hamdi Tanpinar was a beloved Turkish novelist and essayist and a member of Turkish parliament. Born in Istanbul in 1901, Tanpinar came to be educated in several Turkish cities and and travelled widely throughout Europe. The Time Regulation Institute is his most celebrated novel, followed by A Mind at Peace. He thrived at writing about cultural duality and and the divided self.

MAUREEN FREELY (translator) is the principal translator of Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist. She lives in England.

ALEXANDER DAWE (translator) is an American translator of French and Turkish. He lives in Istanbul.

PANKAJ MISHRA (introducer) is an award-winning novelist and essayist whose writing appears frequently in the New York Review of Books, The Guardian, and the London Review of Books. He lives in London and India.