Even that quantity was actually large for the Turkish market, given that Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk's latest novel sold less than 231,000 copies last year. Around 750,000 copies have been sold in the past three years after just 250,000 copies in the previous 15 years combined. To the surprise of some, "Madonna in a Fur Coat" has recently been experiencing a rebirth in the Turkish imagination.
The melodramatic novel tells the story of a post-World War I love affair between Turkish student Raif Efendi and German singer Maria Puder in Berlin. He finally decided to leave Turkey in 1948, but was killed near the Bulgarian border by an unknown assailant in a murder widely attributed to Turkey’s secret service.Īli was an anti-establishment figure, but it is hard to find political messages in "Madonna in a Fur Coat" at first glance.
His novel "Icimizdeki Seytan" ("The Devil Within") drew the ire of ultranationalists. He was arrested for a poem criticizing President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s policies and released in the general amnesty process.Īli's fiction got him into hot water, too. He was imprisoned over his nonfiction writing, including satirical works slamming the government in humor magazines.
He serialized "Madonna in a Fur Coat" in a newspaper in 1941, two years before it would be published as a book. As a left-wing poet, teacher and journalist, he returned home and became an outspoken critic of the single-party regime in the early years of the Turkish Republic. The author lived in Germany between 19 and was shocked by the rise of Nazism there. But why is the 1940s novel still so popular in today's Turkey, and linked to a political event such as the Gezi Park protests?
"Kurk Mantolu Madonna" ("Madonna in a Fur Coat") by Sabahattin Ali is a highly quotable book on issues such as love, relationships, loneliness, coincidences and miracles.
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