Is the snake coiled around the trunk of a pine tree standing alone on a desolate hillside more real, or the author’s dreams? Sait Faik’s last book of short stories, Alemdağ’da Var Bir Yılan (There’s a Snake in Alemdağ), takes seemingly simple – but underneath turbulent – human stories on the thin line between sleep and wakefulness. In addition to fishermen, café-goers and stray cats, there are children who tell their dreams and get lost, narrators who put themselves in the shoes of a tree, travelers who lock eyes with a snake.

Sait Faik’s language is like that strange whistle of the wind as it passes through the cracks in the forest: neither completely fairy tale nor completely real. The stories are loosely connected, but each line probes the “animal in man”, the desire to mingle with nature, the alluring darkness of solitude. As the author creates an inner forest for himself away from the coastal cafes of Istanbul, he invites the reader into his inner labyrinths:

“Perhaps wherever man goes, he takes with him the snake he carries inside him.”

Alemdağ’da Var Bir Yılan (There’s a Snake in Alemdağ) is the final bend in Sait Faik’s story: a bold step into the depths of the surreal; a narrative that leaves the reader alone with his own shadow as he pursues his heroes. The journey from the clear water of the cistern to the red-hot iron of Sahmerdan turns into a snake in this book and bites us.

When you turn the pages, go wherever the trail of the snake takes you – because in these stories, the path itself is more magical than the destination.