Short Stories

Bilbaşar observes in these five stories the rapid transformation of the Turkish society, with its newly emerging forces and the increasingly exploited labor class.

Bilbaşar's earliest book, this collection of eight short stories  describes small-town Anatolian people and their everyday concerns, the skirmishes between small shopkeepers and their debt-ridden customers,  the difficult transformation of feudal landowners learning modern business and trade. The rapid transition of the society is recounted with a critical eye.  In the words of literary critic Tahir Alangu: "Bilbaşar set the foundations of his art in these first stories, writing about humble Anatolian people dg a period w no one wdwh their problems, moving from a realistic observation and description to a realistic criticism, in a lively, colorful and joyful style."(Cumhuriyet'ten sonra Hikaye ve Roman - Short Story and Novel After the Republican Era, 1965)

His second collection brings together 13 short stories.  Set in different regions, these stories describe human tragedies during the period following Ataturk's death.  The government, increasingly cut off from the people, has turned its back to the reforms, and the people, in growing distress from spoliation and oppression, are forced to leave their land.

In this collection, Bilbaşar writes about the middle class people in Izmir after the Second World War, describing the deteriorated living conditions, the moral collapse spreading among the population, and the rapidly developing gap between the different classes in the society.

These five stories reveal the daily problems of tobacco and cotton peasants in the Söke Plain during the years between the Second World War and the elections of 1950, when the political and economic problems of large cities increasingly overwhelmed those of the villages.

This book brings together 35 of Bilbaşar's short stories, some already published in the above collections others in newspapers and magazines.  "These stories reveal Bilbaşar's earnest yearning for a fight against injustice and exploitation," wrote the literary critic Rauf Mutluay in its preface.

This book brings together 18 short stories and a fairy tale which Bilbaşar wrote for children at a period where books for children were rare in Turkey.