Hasan Toptas - Reckless

Hoca: Literally ‘teacher’. Used in both religious and secular senses.

Keşkek: A traditional wedding food made from beef and wheat.

Kuruş: The smallest monetary unit in contemporary Turkey. 100 kuruş is equal to 1 lira. Ultimately derived from the Old Latin ‘denarius grossus’, like the English ‘groat’ (Nişanyan 2007).

Lahmacun: A cooked flat circle of dough and minced meat, often heavily spiced.

Lira: The standard unit of currency in contemporary Turkey.

Mashallah! (Maşallah!): An exclamation of thankfulness to God, often used in place of praise due to the superstition that expressions of jealousy attract the bad luck caused by the evil eye.

Mehmet (military): The generic name used for Turkish soldiers, much as Tommy is used for British soldiers or Jerry for Germans.

Meydan: From the Arabic meaning ‘wide space’, this denotes an open area in a city, town or village: usually a focal point of activity.

Meyhane: From the Persian meaning ‘wine house’. A type of tavern specialising in small meze dishes and rakı .

Muhtar: The elected head of a village or neighbourhood.

Rakı: An aniseed-flavoured alcoholic drink similar to ouzo or arak and typically drunk with water and ice.

Saz: A lute-shaped stringed instrument used in both traditional and modern forms of Turkish music.

Selamünaleykum or Selam: An Arabic greeting meaning ‘peace be upon you’ used around the Muslim world.

Shalwar (Şalvar): Loose trousers sometimes called ‘Harem trousers’ in English.

Sucuk: A dry, spicy beef sausage.

Sultan: The ruler of the Ottoman Empire.

Tarhana: A soup made with yoghurt, wheat or flour, vegetables and herbs.

Vizier (vezir): The Prime Minister in the late Ottoman era, often seen as the real power behind the throne.

Yufka: A thin, unleavened bread.

Zeybek: A form of music and dance native to the Aegean region.

Hasan Ali Toptaş is one of Turkey’s top writers. His short story collections include The Identity of a Laugh, The Whispers of the Nobodies and Solitudes . His novels have won the Çankaya Literature Prize, the Culture Ministry Prize, the Yunus Nadi Novel Prize, the Cevdet Kudret Literature Prize, the Orhan Kemal Novel Prize and the Turkish Writers’ Union Great Novel Prize. His early masterpiece Shadowless (1995), also translated by Maureen Freely and John Angliss, will be published by Bloomsbury in 2016. He now lives in Ankara. He has been translated into German, French and Finnish. Solitudes has been made into a play and Shadowless was made into a film in 1998.

Maureen Freely has translated or co-translated a number of Turkish memoirs and classics as well as five books by the Turkish novelist and Nobel Laureate, Orhan Pamuk. Her seventh novel, Sailing Through Byzantium , was published in 2013.

John Angliss won the inaugural British Council’s Young Translators’ Prize for prose in 2012. He lives in Ankara and has translated Ahmet Altan and Hakan Günday, among others.