Yigit Kulabas · 2012 · global

A Turkish fantasy novel that takes place inside a single day. Kerim is interviewed for a job by a secret company called Time, whose only purpose is to spread it - and the interview runs across four continents and twelve cities, from a bridge in Istanbul that becomes the Golden Gate at sunrise to the meridian at Greenwich.

1. 1
   Bosphorus

   Kerim meets Lara on the Bosphorus Bridge for a job interview, with the day just about to dawn - and the whole novel takes place between that dawn and the following night.

2. 2
   Golden Gate

   With the first light of the sun the bridge becomes the Golden Gate, and Lara names the employer: a secret company called Time, whose only purpose is to spread it - and which invented every unit except the day, month and year.

3. 3
   Fisherman's Wharf

   The first interview, conducted on a San Francisco cable car - where he learns that if he is taken on he will stop ageing, because the company pays its people in time rather than money.

4. 4
   Rio de Janeiro

   The second interview, past midnight, and the interviewer makes him understand that the job is about night - and that the project he would lead is called the Mega Night Project, and its object is to eliminate sleep.

5. 5
   Rome

   The third stop, and the one where he grasps how arbitrary the system is - the weird realities of the modern calendar, laid out in the city that imposed it on the world.

6. 6
   Buenos Aires

   The fourth interview, and he finds himself simply watching people sleep - which is the research phase of the project he has been offered, and the first hint of what accepting would make him.

7. 7
   Boulders

   The Cape, where he is supposed to be shown the time machine - and the machine is not remotely what he was expecting it to be.

8. 8
   Blue Lagoon

   The sixth interview, in Jamaica, and the task he is given: to bring a newborn child to the company's Innovation Centre.

9. 9
   Xochimilco

   Mexico, and a trajinera on the canals of Xochimilco - which the book calls the River of Dreams, and which is the last of the gentle stops.

10. 10
    Cairo

    Discovering the path to immortality, and being kidnapped for it - the point at which the interview stops being an interview.

11. 11
    Chichen Itza

    An unofficial stage that nobody scheduled, at a Mayan observatory built by people who measured time better than anyone since - and where he is told the company's real secrets.

12. 12
    Greenwich

    The prime meridian, where the offer is finally made - Lara asking for an answer at the exact point from which the world agreed to measure the hour, and Kerim unable to give her one.

13. 13
    San Marco

    Venice, and Zamanya - the company's annual summit, to which Lara brings him so that the scale of what Time can do will decide him.

14. 14
    Istanbul

    Home after one day, four continents and twelve cities - and the decision, which the book has been arranging since a bridge turned into a different bridge at sunrise.