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    Madonna in a Fur Coat
    Madonna in a Fur Coat
    Madonna in a Fur Coat
    Audiobook6 hours

    Madonna in a Fur Coat

    Written by Sabahattin Ali

    Narrated by Robert Fass

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A shy young man leaves his home in rural Turkey to learn a trade in 1920s Berlin. The city's crowded streets, thriving arts scene, passionate politics and seedy cabarets provide the backdrop for a chance meeting with a woman, which will haunt him for the rest of his life. Emotionally powerful, intensely atmospheric and touchingly profound, Madonna in a Fur Coat is an unforgettable novel about new beginnings and the unfathomable nature of the human soul.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    TranslatorAlexander Dawe and Maureen Freely
    Release dateNov 7, 2017
    ISBN9781681686042
    Madonna in a Fur Coat
    Author

    Sabahattin Ali

    Sabahattin Ali, 25 ubat 1907 ylnda Bulgaristan Gümülcinede dodu. Babas Selahattin Ali piyade yüzbayd. Annesi ev hanmyd. Sabahattin Ali, babasnn meslei icab birçok yer görmü, çok seyahat etmitir. Anadolunun çeitli illerinde eitimini tamamlamtr. Sabahattin Alinin hayatnda annesinin büyük bir rolü vardr. Annesi psikolojik sorunlar yaayan bir kadndr. 3 kere intihar giriiminde bulunmutur. Sk sk depresyona girip hastanede tedavi edilmitir. Hatta Sabahattin Ali, babas Selahattin Ali Beyin kalp krizi geçirip vefat etmesinin sorumlusu olarak annesinin bitmek bilmeyen rahatszlklarn sebep olarak görmütür.1927de Öretmen okulunu bitirdi ve Yozgat Cumhuriyet Okulunda öretmen oldu. Sabahattin Alinin öretmenlik yapt yllarda Cumhuriyet yeni kurulmutu. Atatürk, ülkeyi kalkndrmak için eitimde atlmlar yapyordu. Yetenekli gençleri yurt dna göndererek eitim almalarn salyorlard. Yurt dnda çeitli dallarda eitim gören gençler, eitimleri bittikten sonra yurda dönüyor ve kendilerini iyi yetimi nesiller yaratmak için ülkeye adyorlard. Sabahattin Ali de bu gençlerden biriydi. Eitim Bakanlnn açt snav kazanarak, dil eitimi almak için Almanyaya gitti. Orada çok iyi Almanca örendi. Hatta o kadar iyiydi ki, Türkiyeye döndüünde Almanca öretmeni olarak göreve balad. Sabahattin Ali, Almanyaya gitmeden önce milliyetçi bir görüe sahipken, Almanyadan döndükten sonra siyasi görüü tamamen deimitir. Komünist bir görüe kaymtr.Almanyada eitimdeyken, orada yaadklarn Kürk Mantolu Madonna kitabnda bize o kadar güzel anlatr ki, gerçekle kurgu birbirine girer. Kürk Mantolu Madonnay bu gözle okumak lazm. Çünkü romandaki Raif Efendinin bir yan Sabahattin Alinin ta kendisidir! Maria Puder isimli roman kahraman, aslnda Sabahattin Alinin Almanyada tanp âk olduu kadndr. Orada yaayp gördüü eyleri Kürk Mantolu Madonna isimli eserinde bize roman tadnda anlatr.Sabahattin Ali, sadece Kürk Mantolu Madonnadan ibaret bir yazar deildir. Kuyucakl Yusuf, çimizdeki eytan, Deirmen, Kan, Ses, Srça Kök ve Yeni Dünyadr. Sabahattin Ali, baz çeviriler de yapmtr. Antigone, Fontamara, Minna Von Barnhelm bunlardan bazlardr. Ayrca Sabahattin Alinin yazd iirlerden bazlar bestelenmitir. Dilimizden düürmediimiz arklardan, Aldrma Gönül, Leylim Ley, Dalar Dalar, Ben Yine Sana Vurgunum, Göklerde Kartal Gibiydim onun iirleridir.

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    Reviews for Madonna in a Fur Coat

    4/5

    143 ratings6 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Originally written in the 1940's this book was recently translated into English.

      Raif is sent from Turkey to Germany to learn the soap trade, expected to return home to run his father's soap factories.

      He's a very isolated and lonely person, both before and after moving to Germany. By chance, he attends an art exhibition and falls in love with a painting: the Madonna in a Fur Coat. He returns day after day to spend time with the painting, imagining what the woman in the picture must be like.

      Eventually he meets the artist Maria. It's a self-portrait, so it's a little bit like the painting has come to life for Raif.

      They build a friendship that eventually grows into a closer relationship until family duty pulls Raif back to Turkey. Eventually Raif and Maria lose contact leading to devastating results in Raif's life.
    • 4/5
      In MADONNA IN A FUR COAT, Sabahattin Ali tells a melodramatic version of the familiar love and loss story. What makes this novel interesting, however, is the characterization of the two lovers that reverses traditional gender roles. Raif is docile and nurturing, while Maria is assertive and outgoing. She picks up on these traits immediately by telling Raif that “there is something about you that makes me think of a young girl” while characterizing herself “like a man in many other ways.” While this motif may seem mundane, one needs to place it in the context of the Middle East where strict gender roles are important features of the culture.

      Ali tells the story almost entirely in one long flashback. The narrator is an unemployed young man who gets a job at a commercial factory in Ankara with the help of an abrasive former classmate. He befriends Raif Efendi, a shy introvert, who works translating documents between German and Turkish. Raif reads a lot, supports a household full of lazy unappreciative relatives, and ironically seems to the narrator to have little to recommend him as an interesting acquaintance. “He was, I thought, too timid ever to dare explore his soul, let alone express it. He had, I thought, no more life inside him than a plant.” The plot reveals itself when Raif suffers a life-threatening illness and asks his friend to retrieve and destroy a personal notebook from his desk at the factory. The bulk of the novel represents the narrator’s reading of this manuscript, which is a memoir of a period Raif spent in Berlin during the 20’s.

      Demonstrating little ambition, Raif’s father decides to send him to Berlin to learn new methods he could employ in the family’s soap-making business. Instead, Raif spends most of his time learning German, reading, going to museums, and exploring Berlin. On one of his visits to a museum, he becomes infatuated with the portrait of a woman in a fur coat, later to see her on the street. He follows her to her work as a nightclub singer. The two strike up a platonic relationship that blossoms into love. With promises to reunite, the two split up with Maria going to Prague and Raif back to Turkey. The pair eventually lose contact but we are left with the knowledge that they may have had a child from their union. Since Maria was part Jewish, one is left wondering whether her disappearance had something to do with the Holocaust.

      Ali develops some much-traveled love story themes in his novel, including the roles that fate and missed opportunities play, the compromises lovers make, and the intensity of love and loss. The psychological makeups of the principal characters are key strengths of the novel. However, Ali’s failures to more fully flesh out the intriguing settings of depression-era Germany and Turkey during Ataturk’s secularization initiatives seems to be a missed opportunity. The plot is intriguing, but it loses much of its potential for suspense with the flashback structure prematurely revealimg most of the affair’s outcome. The narrator’s insight at the novel’s conclusion exposes much about Ali’s thematic intention: “It is, perhaps, easier to dismiss a man whose face gives no indication of an inner life. And what a pity that is: a dash of curiosity is all it takes to stumble upon treasures we never expected.”
    • 4/5
      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!
    • 4/5
      A young clerk finds himself sharing an office with the self-effacing, Bartlebyish commercial translator Raif Effendi, visits him at home a couple of times when he's ill, and slowly gets to know and love him, but the two of them never really manage to talk. Then Raif becomes more seriously ill and entrusts a notebook to the narrator, which turns out to be an account of Raif's stay in Berlin sometime in the early 1920s.

      He has been sent there to learn about the soap industry but actually spends his time discovering German literature and art. At an exhibition of modern art, he is captivated by a self-portrait by the artist Maria Puder (which he starts to think of as "Madonna in a fur coat") and goes back over and over again to look at it. The artist eventually notices him, of course, but when she asks him about his interest in the picture he is too shy to look her in the face, and doesn't register who she is until another occasion when they pass by chance in the street. When the two of them eventually do start talking to each other they never stop, falling into an intensive emotional friendship. Maria is very conscious that there's a strong "masculine" side to her own personality that is complemented by something "feminine" in Raif's, and both of them are afraid of the sort of power relationships that would be implied by a conventional love affair. And of course they do eventually end up in bed together and fate doesn't grant them the time to redefine the terms of their friendship to deal with the effects of that.

      Lovely and sad and romantic, but subtle and funny as well - I think you'd have a hard time finding something to dislike in this delicate little book, unless you happen to be a power-crazed male politician...
    • 3/5
      A very different love story that I found interesting and a decent read.

      Thanks to Other Press and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.
    • 4/5
      Excellent read of a romantic love and its dramatic consequences.