The slight hum of boiling water in the metal… The smell of tea added to it… A thin mist that extends from the back streets of the neighborhood to the sea… Samovar is a book born in this mist.

The Samovar, Sait Faik’s first book of short stories, presents small slices of 1930s Istanbul. But these are not encyclopedic pictures of the city; they are like the hands of a man cleaning fish on the pier, the shaky laughter of children taking shelter from the rain, a boat bobbing in the lantern light at midnight. The author takes the ordinary sounds of the street and gives them an unforgettable timbre.

There are no heroes in these stories, no triumphs – but there are those tiny moments that touch the heart. The rush of the future seen in the grounds of a tea… The desire to travel hidden in the wing of a seagull… The friendships formed by a samovar and often ending in silence…

“To live is a bit like waiting by a samovar,” he writes; he tells the poetry of patience, sharing and waiting.

Samovar is a beginning in our literature – but it is also an endless invitation. As you turn the pages, you will feel that this invitation will make you sit down at an old wooden table, next to a steaming thin glass.