Because his father's vocation required frequent relocation, Tanpınar continued his education in several different cities, including Istanbul, Sinop, Siirt, Kirkuk, and Antalya.

During his time at the university, Tanpınar was tutored by Yahya Kemal, whose views deeply influenced the pupil's intellectual development and ideas about aesthetics, literature, Turkish history and culture.

As an educator, he provoked debate and a degree of controversy in the 1930s after arguing for the elimination of pre-Tanzimat literature from national school curricula.

In 1953, he made an extensive journey to Europe over the course of six months, traveling to many countries including France, Belgium, Holland, England, Spain and Italy.

The book explores, in an often absurd and sardonic style making heavy use of symbolic imagery, topics as Turkey's troubled transition to a modern society and the departure from old values (and sometimes from reason) that it entails.

[4] Between the years 1944 to 1946, Tanpınar served as a member of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey representing Kahramanmaraş (then known as Maraş) [citation needed].

Although Tanpınar did not write many novels, his corpus of prose fiction has been extensively studied by Turkish literary critics.