Sabahattin Ali (1907–1948)

Madonna in a Fur Coat was first published in 1943, and it is a short magical story about a Turkish man who falls in love with the Berlin of the 1920s. Not only is he naïve young man falling in love be he falls in love with ‘a self-portrait of herself first’. Raif Efende is a man out of his depth in Berlin.

Efende has been sent to Berlin to learn all about the German soap industry by his father. He is also taking advantage of being in the centre of Europe after the Great War and this is the place that he has only ever read about in literature. Raif is a dreamer not the worker that his father would have preferred.

The narrator opens the story where we first meet Raif where he is a translator in a Turkish business. People berate Raif as he never shouts back which encourages his extended family to take advantage of him and his wife. Even when he is home in bed ill his employer still sends letters to be translated and sometimes the narrator is the deliverer of these letters.

Over time the narrator thinks that he knows Raif, but it is not until Raif is dying that he opens up to the narrator. Raif opens a notebook dated 20th June 1933, where he has written about his life, times and love in Berlin. He also describes the short life that he had with Maria Puder.

This is a melancholic love story full of yearning and lost love. Nothing but a vanished era recreated in words. Some people will recognise themselves in the story.… (more)

4.5*

At his new job in Ankara, the narrator shares an office with the taciturn Raif Efendi. Raif’s meekness borders on the exasperating. He seems to delight in taking the brunt of his superiors’ unjust beratings, he is misunderstood by his wife and children and looked down upon by practically everybody else. However, the narrator cannot help feeling that behind this exterior, Raif harbours some secret, and he longs to discover more about his mysterious colleague’s past. When, at last, Raif takes him into his confidence, the narrator learns of a life-defining love affair, a passionate relationship with an independent, artistic young woman set against the backdrop of 1920s Berlin. This highly-charged, if unusual romance, shaped the man Raif is today.

More than 70 years after its original publication (in 1943), “Madonna in a Fur Coat” has become an unexpected hit with Turkish young adults who have adopted its protagonist, gentle Raif Efendi, as an unlikely symbol of resistance against the gender stereotypes promoted by President Erdoğan. (See here and here.)

Good for them, I say, and if this slim novella can bear the weight of a such a brave position it is, in part, a measure of its greatness. I tried, however, to approach this book without any preconceptions. And what did I find? A poignant portrait of a relationship, lyrically narrated (kudos in that respect to translators Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe). Also, all things considered, a moving, old-fashioned love story. I do not used the term “old-fashioned” in a disparaging sense: on the contrary, Sabahattan Ali’s work continues the Romantic tradition of novels about all-consuming, almost obsessive loves. It reminded me – in its emotional intensity, if not in the specifics – of books such as Goethe’s [b:The Sorrows of Young Werther|16640|The Sorrows of Young Werther|Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386920896s/16640.jpg|746264], Dostoyevsky’s [b:White Nights|1772910|White Nights|Fyodor Dostoyevsky|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1450699039s/1772910.jpg|4111509] or Turgenev’s [b:First Love|3532|First Love|Ivan Turgenev|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1487439352s/3532.jpg|1948996]. In its belief in the possibility of two persons becoming one, “Madonna in a Fur Coat” is an antidote to our cynical times. Indeed, the tragedy at the heart of this novel is not that “Love” cannot or does not exist – if it didn’t, we could simply resign ourselves to its absence. The tragedy rather lies in the fact that the circumstances of life often conspire to thwart it. And that, too, is very Romantic.

The novel has another message to impart – don’t judge people by their appearances or books by their cover. The dullest, least striking person might be hiding a colourful history or a deep well of passion. And an unassuming novella, slated by its first critics, might, as in this case, become a cult classic and a radical manifesto.… (more)