Aziz Nesin originally conceived Yaşar, Neither He Lives, Nor He Doesn't as a radio play. Following its massive success, he adapted it for the stage, and later, yielding to persistent demands, wrote a screenplay for it—though, true to the perennial struggles of writers, he never received his royalties from the film producers. The story then took on new lives as a serialized comic strip in a weekly newspaper and a television script. Ultimately, succumbing to overwhelming pressure and requests from his devoted readers, Nesin transformed the absurd and beloved saga of Yaşar Yaşamaz into the novel form it holds today.

In the book's introduction, Meral Çelen captures the essence of this extraordinary popularity by speaking through the voice of Yaşar himself: "...At first, I couldn't understand why my fame spread so widely, or why you loved me so much. But now I know... Just as there is a little bit of Don Quixote in all of us, it seems there is also a little bit of Yaşar Yaşamaz... If what happened to me was entirely foreign to you, would you have loved me? Would you have sought me out?" A brilliant, multi-layered satirical masterpiece, this novel resonates deeply with anyone who has ever felt invisible to, or crushed by, the relentless and absurd machinery of bureaucracy.