Madonna in a Fur Coat

Madonna in a Fur Coat

by Maureen Freely (Translator), Maureen Freely (Translator), Alexander Dawe (Translator), Alexander Dawe (Translator), Sabahattin Ali (Author)

Synopsis

The bestselling Turkish classic of love and longing in a changing world, available in English for the first time. 'It is, perhaps, easier to dismiss a man whose face gives no indication of an inner life. And what a pity that is: a dash of curiosity is all it takes to stumble upon treasures we never expected.' A shy young man leaves his home in rural Turkey to learn a trade in 1920s Berlin. The city's crowded streets, thriving arts scene, passionate politics and seedy cabarets provide the backdrop for a chance meeting with a woman, which will haunt him for the rest of his life. Emotionally powerful, intensely atmospheric and touchingly profound, Madonna in a Fur Coat is an unforgettable novel about new beginnings and the unfathomable nature of the human soul. 'Passionate but clear . . . Ali's success [is in ] his ability to describe the emergence of a feeling, seemingly straightforward from the outside but swinging back and forth between opposite extremes at its core, revealing the tensions that accompanies such rise and fall.' Atilla OEzkirimli, writer and literary historian

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 176
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Published: 05 May 2016

ISBN 10: 0241206197
ISBN 13: 9780241206195

Media Reviews
Full of yearning and melancholy. Short, moving and memorable: reading it is like taking a literary minibreak. -- Fiona Wilson * The Times *
Its prose sparkles with the friction between eastern conservatism and western decadence. This is above all a tale of young love and disenchantment, of missed opportunities and passion's elusive, flickering flame . . . a little reminiscent of Turgenev's First Love, with a hero every bit as gauche, and a twist every bit as bitter. -- Toby Lichtig * Financial Times *
A gorgeously melancholic romance . . . a cautionary tale certain to beguile. -- Eileen Battersby * The Irish Times *
A poignant coming-of-age tale, drenched in disillusionment. The gap between hope and reality, art and ordinary life, has been explored in many other novels, but rarely with the unaffected simplicity of Madonna in a Fur Coat . . .The translation by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe is crisp, capturing Ali's directness and clarity of language. -- William Armstrong * Times Literary Supplement *
Offsets inter-war Berlin's decadent dazzle with bouts of shade, murk and melancholy . . . recreates a vanished era and dramatises a doomed relationship, and does so with verve, depth and poignancy. The result is a miniature masterpiece. -- Malcolm Forbes * The National *
Author Bio
Sabahattin Ali (Author) Sabahattin Ali was born in 1907 in the Ottoman town of Egridere (now Ardino in southern Bulgaria) and was killed on the Bulgarian border in 1948 as he attempted to leave Turkey. A teacher, writer, and journalist, he owned and edited a popular weekly newspaper called Marko Pasa and was imprisoned twice for his political views.