Unlikely cult classic: "Madonna in a Fur Coat" by Sabahattin Ali

"Madonna in a Fur Coat" by Sabahattin Ali

(translated by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe)

Review of an unlikely cult classic

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.

Sabahattin Ali

More than 70 years after its original publication (in 1943), “Madonna in a Fur Coat” (Kürk Mantolu Madonna) 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 The Sorrows of Young Werther, Dostoyevsky’s White Nights or Turgenev’s First Love. 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.

1920s Berlin, the setting of the novel

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.

Waiting for inspiration

ebook, 224 pages

Published November 7th 2017 by Other Press (NY) (first published 1943)