Review of Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali

*Madonna in a Fur Coat* by Sabahattin Ali, translated by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe (1943). Published by Penguin.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

This blog post is interesting to me because lately, I’ve been struggling to get in my reading time. I was working for the longest time as a freelancer and contractor, but recently pivoted to an 8-5 job where I’m in an office. It’s not hybrid, so I’m always at home trying to put the puzzle pieces together of how I’ll get my reading done. I also continue working on this blog when I’m not at work, so the Instagram reels I’m fed about a 5-9 feel too real right now.

Anyways, I am trying to find that time to read here and there. Somehow I’m still on track for my Goodreads goal, even though I’ve been slowly giving up on the notion of reading goals in life. I think they can be a little too much pressure and takes the fun off of reading at the end of the day, and I want to read because I want to stay in touch with literature while also pursuing my side career as a writer.

Today’s blog post comes from my newfound obsession with Turkish literature. Whether it’s Turkish diaspora or someone actually writing in Turkey, translated by one of the few Turkish to English translators out there, I’ve been trying to find all of the Turkish books my local library will stock. I think it helped that Madonna in a Fur Coat was trending on TikTok around the same time as me writing this.

Due to my publishing schedule I’m imagining this will come out closer to March 2026, but right now the girlies are all obsessed with this book. I found out after reading it, as someone I know mentioned it and I thought it was odd that they were reading this random Turkish book around the same itme as me. I don’t use TikTok or even really get my book recommendations from social media platforms anymore.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want the introduction to get too long.

A young Turkish man moves to Berlin in the 1920s and finds love in an unexpected manner.

The focus of this novel is who I wrote about above. A young Turkish man from the Turkish countryside, he moves away from his homeland and moves to metropolitan Berlin in the midst of the twenties, which is the heyday of the Weimar Republic (and comes with its own unique and economic challenges compared to Turkey at the time).

All of this is told on a man’s deathbed, as the narrator finds his journal recalling his tryst in Germany and love with a woman named Maria. The actual narrator is someone who, despite being highly qualified for other jobs, starts working as a clerk and meets Raif, the man who describes his philosophical questions of life, while on the job.

We learn through the journals that it’s in Berlin that he flourishes into himself, as he’s quite the shy boy when he first arrives in the city. It’s there as well that he stumbles upon the painting “Madonna in a Fur Coat,” which is a self-portrait of the artist, but it also intrigues the main character to the point where it becomes an obsession.

He notes that it was like something he had seen before many times, even though he’s from the Turkish countryside and probably has not seen something like that in his lifetime.This kickstarts the rest of the novel, especially considering the young man finds a local woman who he falls in love with desperately. Their love story has its ups and downs, especially considering the politics and history of the times, as well as the fact that he’s a Turk and she’s a German woman.

While one could argue a chunk of the novel is actually about Raif’s coming of age in a foreign country, the main focus of the novel to me is about his relationships within that country, especially when it comes to Maria. He falls hard and fast for Maria when he meets her, and by the time the novel ends we learn how exactly Raif managed to end up back in Turkey—with no mention of Maria at the beginning of the novel.

He didn’t really have a purpose until he saw the painting of Madonna in the fur coat, or meeting Maria, and Berlin gave him that purpose. Now that he’s laying in Turkey dying, we see how vibrant his life was, even if he was just aimlessly strolling through the streets at times. He isn’t just a sick man laying in his final resting spot; he was once someone with hopes and dreams.

Overall Thoughts

I wanted to read this novel partially because of how fascinating Sabahattin Ali was. He was someone who defied the expectations of the newly formed Republic of Turkey at the time, which ultimately led to his untimely death as well as censorship of his work. He also lived in Germany as a young man, just like Raif, although I questioned whether he, too, fell in love with a half-Jewish woman depicted in a painting.

That aside, I wanted more from this novel than what was given. The writing and translation itself is very good, and I genuinely have no qualms with the style and way this story was presented. Ali was a talented writer, and I will seek out the rest of his work when I get the chance.

I think my qualms laid with the fact that’s similar to The Great Gatsby; the story is presented through a secondhand manner, even though we have the journals in this way. Raif in the present moment is more philosophical and guarded, and I think I would have preferred to get directly into his head as he reflects on his life up until this moment.

This is a bit picky, but I believe the story would have appealed to me more in that way. It’s still a very good novel, and I recommend picking it up if you have the chance! It’s not my favorite, but I certainly enjoyed reading through it.

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