Sırça Köşk (The Glass Palace) gathers thirteen short pieces by Sabahattin Ali, nine written as realist short stories and four as fairy tales, first published in 1947 not long before the author's death. The stories — among them "Portakal" (Orange), about the injustice suffered by a ship captain and his crew; "Katil Osman"; "Bahtiyar Köpek" (The Fortunate Dog); and "Cankurtaran," about a woman who has surrendered to her fate — are typical of Ali's realism: plain, direct prose trained on the poor, the powerless, and the quietly wronged.
The four fairy tales, including "Bir Aşk Masalı" (A Love Story) and the title story "Sırça Köşk," use a folk-tale register to smuggle in sharper social and political criticism than the realist stories attempt directly. The title tale in particular carried enough of a political charge that the collection was seized by Turkey's single-party government shortly after publication.
Taken together, the collection shows Sabahattin Ali working in miniature what he does at length in his novels — an unsentimental, sympathetic eye trained on the people Turkish society of the 1930s and 40s left behind.