This was great, and I'm sad that it only has been translated into English and made available for Western audiences in the last few years. A very poignant tale.

Cried for a good while after finishing this.

I felt such despair reading the first 25% of this book that I almost gave up on finishing it. It reeked of ennui and meaningless sadness; but see, what I didn't know then was that it was not meaningless, it was very purposefully made so by the author, because as the story unfolds and especially how it ends, you're sobbing, because now it all makes sense.

As the blurbs suggest - this is an unforgettable love story. I rooted for the couple and my god, how I cried. What I'm saying is: this story is beautiful. It alludes to stoicism and how it isn't helpful in the long run, and how a deep meaningful connection with someone can be unbelievably glorious, when found during one's life.

A wonderful historical fiction set in the heart of 1920s Berlin. It's one man's story of life and a longing to belong in the German capital between the two wars.

Madonna in a Fur Coat is well written with a kind of quiet intensity underlying the straight forward but meticulously chosen prose which I really liked. But what can I say, I lack a taste for romance like this-full of I always knew, I could never engage with the world again, let me sacrifice all my life's happiness for this one, etc which always feels like a weight of depression than grand romance to me. I'll happily read something else by Ali though, that prose was so good!

“Life is a game that is only played once, and I lost. There is no second chance...”

If I were to review this in just a line I'd say: A platonic re-imagining of Venus in Furs in a typical romantic recipe: a sad character, a bit of unrequited love, a tragic love story, there's no life left after a tragic love.
I am not fond of the bleak outlook on love of the Romanticism and that should have put me off, but Sabahattin Ali was a clever guy and by the time I've found out what was all about, he tricked me into feeling quite deeply about Raif. He really compelled me into caring very much about his character, about his life and the why behind his behaviour. I wanted to fight Raif's battles for him, I wanted to shelter him and slap his family, if possible. I wanted Raif to be happy, to stand up for himself once and for all! Finding out about his lost love should have made me judges him very harsh, almost hate Raif, but by the end of the book I still wished him some happiness.(PS: I might have even shed a tear or two for him :p) : “For even the most wretched and simple-minded man could be a surprise, even a fool could have a soul whose torments were a constant source of amazement. Why are we so slow to see this, and why do we assume that it is the easiest thing in the world to know and judge another?”

Set in 1920s Berlin, this is the story of a lonely Turkish man who befriends an artist and cabaret artist, Maria Puder. The two share a passionate but short lived friendship. The novel is compelling and recommended.

I was quite surprised by this book, as what I thought the book would be like, based on the synopsis, was not at all what it was like. Having said that, I did enjoy it very much. A modernist novella by Turkish author Sabahattin Ali, it focuses on the mysterious and ultimately doomed love affair between Raif, a young man who has come to Berlin to further his family fortunes in the soap business, and his enigmatic Madonna in a Fur Coat. It sums up the decadence and furious sadness of Berlin between the wars in a more melancholy way than Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood, but I was constantly reminded of it as I was reading. Sweet, sad and elegiac.

How happy I am that this beautiful story was translated into English after all this time! I often think about the many potentially life-changing books I will never be able to discover or even read because of language barriers, and it's a thought that makes me indescribably sad. But here it is! Taking place in Berlin during the 1920s and in Ankara of the following decades, featuring a shy male protagonist who falls in love with a painting, and the artist who gives new meaning to his life - what more could I ask for? The Turkish classic of my dreams!

I could hardly summarize the plot without giving away all of it, as to be honest there is little plot to begin with, but in any case it's that profoundly romantic philosophy that pushed me on through the pages. All the while, every strange train of thought made sense, and I felt deeply attached to the characters, perhaps because of my own migration background and my personal nostalgia for the jazz age that reaches beyond the known Western image of its glamour.

Despite it being a story inside a story - a literary device that I'm getting increasingly sick of in historical fiction - I enjoyed <i>Madonna in a Fur Coat</i> as I have enjoyed only few novels from the early 20th century. In fact, I marvelled at the progressive ideas Sabahattin Ali managed to put into beautiful, beautiful words, and at the many feminist notions that left me pleasantly surprised.

There are so many precious quotes that the author left us in this work alone and that are surely going to keep me awake tonight. I'm afraid that for the first time in my life I'll have to pick up a neon pen and mark the most beautiful passages in a physical book copy to return to on bleak Sunday afternoons. I hope with all my heart that this beautiful novel is going to be a success with its newly-found audience!

This is a magical novel about a Turkish man who falls in love with a portrait of a lady, set in 1920s Berlin. Whilst brilliantly evocative of the time and the people who lived in it, this novel as a whole failed to enrapture my attention and capture my emotions. The slow start may have put me in a disposition to disallow this novel to fully appeal to me, as it did improve in pace from the beginning portion but I was still no more inclined to this novel once it had done so.

Thanks to Netgalley I was given the opportunity to read and review this beautiful book, written in Turkey in 1941 and translated now to English.

What can I say about Raif Efendi's story that doesn't sound lame and can actually do justice to the strength of his love and his commitment to the woman he loved for a few months, for the rest of his life? This was a story that resonated deeply inside me, because at many levels I related to this shy and introvert man, full of deep thoughts and a rich inner life that he struggled to reveal to the outer world.

All of his life people misunderstood him and sold him short, just because he retreated inside his head and was unable to communicate in a strong way. However, he had a rich past, full of hopes and dreams, that he had shared with no one, and that at some point in his life were a promise for a life that could have turned out quite different.

Beautiful and sad, this book that was written in Turkey in 1941 could actually have been written today, anywhere in the world, and it's a rare gem.

Recommended to everyone who has ever loved, or will ever love.

Ok, this is another of those books that I requested based on the strength of the cover and the title. I can’t say that I loved Madonna in a Fur Coat but I can appreciate certain things about the story. The whole bait and switch of protagonists was in interesting twist. Along with the mysterious nature of Marie and the unending yearning of Reif made the story romantic and certainly of its period.

Whilst Madonna in a Fur Coat certainly has positives it is not something I would normally read.

Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali is available now.

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Madonna in a Fur Coat is a the story of a love affair between a shy Turkish man and a freedom-loving artist in Berlin in the 1920s. When a man slowly becomes friends with his new colleague Raif Efendi, he doesn’t realise that soon he will read Raif’s notebook and discover how the man knows German and what makes him seem so serious. First published in Turkey in the 1940s, Sabahattin Ali’s novel has now been translated into English so this tale of yearning and belonging can be read by a new audience.

Through a framing narrator who finds a job out of desperation and gets drawn into the story of his new colleague, the novel tells the narrative of Raif Efendi, a Turkish man who leaves his native country to study and discover who he is in Germany in the 1920s. His notebook tells his tale, from his sense of isolation in the world to the chance encounter in an art exhibition that will consume his life. The novel is mostly about inner feelings and the tiny steps of an unconventional love affair with a woman who values her freedom and has no time for the way women are mostly treated at that point. The main characters are eccentric and vivid, forming a concise and enjoyable piece of literary fiction with a meditative core.

This is a very literary novel that tells a bittersweet story of unrequited love set in 1920s Berlin. Our protagonist is a shy young Turkish man who understands life through art, primarily books. He falls in love with a painting then the artist and the story follows the development of this love affair to which the object of his desire can never fully commit herself.

Beneath this romantic tale is a meditation on loneliness and intimacy, on what it means to open oneself up to other people and the costs and joys of doing so. It also contemplates art as both a means of connection and communication as well as a barrier or substitute for personal interaction.