1943; 201 pages. New Author? : Yes. Genre : Highbrow Lit; Turkish Literature;
Romance. Overall Rating : 8½*/10.
Never has Raif Efendi had his life touched this profoundly! Maybe it's her enigmatic smile. Perhaps it's her eyes, filled with anguish
and resolve. It might even be the fur
coat she’s wearing. Or her plump lips,
her slightly swollen eyelids, her long nose, or even her slightly upturned
chin. Probably it’s a combination of all
these features.
Alas, 'tis a pity that this is a painting, not an actual person. It’s hanging in an art gallery at an
exhibition.
But do not despair, Raif.
There must be some information listed in the exhibition catalog. And sure enough there is.
The painting is titled “Maria Puder, Self-portrait”. So now you have a name, and possibly even a
picture of your dream woman. That’s a
start.
Unfortunately, you’re in Berlin, and you’re a poor Turkish immigrant,
here to learn the soap-making trade. You
can barely find your way to the soap factory, and this is post-World War One
Germany. The Yellow Pages haven't been invented yet.
But where there’s a will, there’s a way, Raif. So maybe if you just go walking around the
city, you’ll run into her. Your Madonna In A Fur Coat.
What’s To Like...
Madonna In A Fur Coat is a Turkish novel written
in the 1940’s, set in Turkey in the 1930’s, with the main character, Raif,
reminiscing about the time he spent in Berlin in the 1920’s. The story is written in the first-person POV:
by our never-named narrator for the first quarter of the book, then by Raif
writing in his notebook for the rest of the way.
The
book is a masterful character study of the two protagonists. Our narrator sees Raif as a mouse of a man,
manipulated by the rest of his family, and stoically cowed at work . He reminded me of Gregor Mamsa in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, and Willy Loman in Death Of A Salesman. But everything changes when he meets Maria,
our other protagonist, who’s just as fascinating. She's a strong female lead, and that may be commonplace
nowadays, but not back in the 1940’s.
The
writing is impressive, given that this is an English translation from the
original Turkish. I liked the literary
nods Sabahattin Ali gives to other prominent writers , both Turkish and
worldwide: Turgenev, Theodor Storm, Jakob Wasserman, Michel Zevaco, Jules
Verne, Alexandre Dumas, Ahmet Mithat Efendi, and Vecihi Bey. There were also a couple of kewl art
references. I was introduced to Andrea
del Sarto’s painting, Madonna of the Harpies,
and was awed by it.
This is a short book, barely 200 pages.
Wikipedia calls it a novella, but I think it’s too long for that
designation. Paradoxically, this was an easy read, despite the depth of the storyline. I liked the post-WW1 “feel”
of the settings, both in Turkey and in Germany.
These are countries that were on the losing side of that conflict, and
their national psyches were impacted by that.
There’s
not a lot of action in the book, which will turn off some readers. Overall, this is a very sad tale,
similar to classics like Flowers For Algernon
and Doctor Zhivago, and that will turn off
others. It is also a Romance
novel, which normally would cause me to run away from it. Yet I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It is an emotional rollercoaster ride,
with incredible highs and lows, and with Fate dealing our two lovers some cruel
twists. Such is life at times.
Excerpts...
He was rather
ordinary, with no distinguishing features – no different from the hundreds of
others we meet and fail to notice in the course of a normal day. Indeed, there was no part of his life –
public or private – that might give rise to curiosity. He was, in the end, the sort of man who
causes us to ask ourselves, “What does he live for? What does he find in life? What logic compels him to keep breathing? What philosophy drives him as he wanders the
earth?” But we ask in vain if we fail to
look beyond the surface – if we forget that beneath each surface lurks another
realm, in which a caged mind whirls alone.
(loc. 39)
All my life, I’d
shied away from human company, never sharing my thoughts with a soul. How pointless this seemed now, and how
absurd! I’d thought that it was life
itself that had ground me down, that my sadness stemmed from spiritual
malaise. After spending two hours with a
book, and finding it more pleasurable than two years of real life, I’d remember
again that life had no meaning and sink back into despair.
But since first
setting eyes on that painting, everything had changed. (loc. 1271)
Kewlest New Word…
Pension n.; European) : a type of guest house or boarding house.
Others
: Contretemps (n.).
Kindle Details...
Madonna in a Fur Coat sells for $8.99
at Amazon. Amazon doesn’t offer any
other books by Sabahattin Ali in English, not even in paperback. But if you’re fluent in Spanish or German,
then there are several more options at Amazon.
“Even when he has a lamb between his teeth, a wolf can hide his
savagery behind a smile.” (loc.
1203)
A
few words should be said about Sabahattin Ali. He was born in 1907, and died in 1948. He
was arrested in 1933 for writing a poem that was viewed as criticizing the
policies of Turkey’s leader at the time, Kemal Ataturk, who's their equivalent of
our George Washington. He was jailed for
several months, released, pardoned via amnesty, but required to write a nationalistic poem
to prove his allegiance to Ataturk.
He
served in the Turkish military during World War 2, and was imprisoned and
released once more in 1944. He was subsequently
denied a passport, and was murdered along the Bulgarian border in 1948, either by the smuggler he trusted, or the
Turkish National Security Service.
You might think this is just a product of Cold War mentality, but in
2005, the Turkish author (and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006)
Orhan Pamuk was also persecuted by the Turkish government for expressing pro-Kurdish
sentiments. The specific charge was
“insulting Turkisnness”.
Apparently the phrase “the pen is
mightier than the sword” is feared in Turkey.
You
can read the English-language Wikipedia article about Sabahattin Ali here. There is a more complete Wkipedia
article on him in Turkish, but unfortunately my knowledge of that language is limited
to about two words.
8½ Stars. We’ll count this as my once-a-year highbrow
read, even though it is probably more middlebrow (i.e.: “book club”) material.
It is also the fifth Turkish book I’ve read over the years, albeit only the second one
since starting this blog. The
others are: Death In Troy, by Bilge Karasu; The Long White Cloud – Gallipoli, by Buket Uzuner;
and two books by Orhan Pamuk, Snow and My Name Is Red.
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