Skip to main content

Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali: book review



Madonna in a Fur Coat (1943, English version 2016) is set in in Germany in the early 1920s and in Turkey in 1941.

In Istanbul, Turkey, the narrator has been sacked from his bank job. Unemployed, he meets his long-time friend Hamdi, who secures him a clerical job. At Hamdi’s place of employment, the narrator shares an office with the German translator Raif Efendi.

The narrator is struck by Efendi’s presence: ‘’Of all the people I have chanced upon in life, there is no one who has left a greater impression.’’ But others workers despise Efendi because he is quiet and a loner, adept at character sketches of people at work, which he draws secretly.

Raif Efendi is constantly absent from work through pleurisy, an inflammation of the lungs. To understand his illness, and the man, the story goes back 20 years, when, at age 24, Efendi was living in Berlin.

Efendi attends an art exhibition: ‘’I cannot describe the torrent that swept through me in that moment. I only remember standing, transfixed, before a portrait of a woman wearing a fur coat … She was a swirling blend of all the women I had ever imagined.’’ He refers to the woman as Madonna in a Fur Coat – ‘’the pale, long-nosed, dark-eyed woman draped in the skin of a wildcat.’’

Through Efendi’s diary notes, the woman is revealed: her name, her profession, her character, and the indelible impact she had on him. It is the woman that has shaped his life and character from that moment in the early 1920s for the next 20 years. And it is this that spellbinds the narrator as the bond with Efendi strengthens between them.

This novel, though set in a specific period and location, is timeless in its themes of desire, love, obsession, imagination, and the ties that bind people together. It is also of the fragility of these connections, and the swiftness that tears them apart, not so much by people’s actions, but by their inactions. It’s quite an interesting novel.  











 

 

MARTINA NICOLLS

MartinaNicollsWebsite

 

Martinasblogs

Publications

Facebook

Paris Website

Animal Website

Flower Website

SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES 


MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author  of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce  (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pir-E-Kamil - The Perfect Mentor by Umera Ahmed: book review

The Perfect Mentor pbuh  (2011) is set in Lahore and Islamabad in Pakistan. The novel commences with Imama Mubeen in medical university. She wants to be an eye specialist. Her parents have arranged for her to marry her first cousin Asjad. Salar Sikander, her neighbour, is 18 years old with an IQ of 150+ and a photographic memory. He has long hair tied in a ponytail. He imbibes alcohol, treats women disrespectfully and is generally a “weird chap” and a rude, belligerent teenager. In the past three years he has tried to commit suicide three times. He tries again. Imama and her brother, Waseem, answer the servant’s call to help Salar. They stop the bleeding from his wrist and save his life. Imama and Asjad have been engaged for three years, because she wants to finish her studies first. Imama is really delaying her marriage to Asjad because she loves Jalal Ansar. She proposes to him and he says yes. But he knows his parents won’t agree, nor will Imama’s parents. That
1 comment
Read more

Flaws in the Glass, a self-portrait by Patrick White: book review

The manuscript, Flaws in the Glass (1981), is Patrick Victor Martindale White’s autobiography. White, born in 1912 in England, migrated to Sydney, Australia, when he was six months old. For three years, at the age of 20, he studied French and German literature at King’s College at the University of Cambridge in England. Throughout his life, he published 12 novels. In 1957 he won the inaugural Miles Franklin Literary Award for Voss, published in 1956. In 1961, Riders in the Chariot became a best-seller, winning the Miles Franklin Literary Award. In 1973, he was the first Australian author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for The Eye of the Storm, despite many critics describing his works as ‘un-Australian’ and himself as ‘Australia’s most unreadable novelist.’ In 1979, The Twyborn Affair was short-listed for the Booker Prize, but he withdrew it from the competition to give younger writers the opportunity to win the award. His autobiography, Flaws in the Glass
Post a Comment
Read more

Sister cities discussed: Canberra and Islamabad

Two months ago, in March 2015, Australia and Pakistan agreed to explore ways to deepen ties. The relationship between Australia and Pakistan has been strong for decades, and the two countries continue to keep dialogues open. The annual bilateral discussions were held in Australia in March to continue engagements on a wide range of matters of mutual interest. The Pakistan delegation discussed points of interest will include sports, agriculture, economic growth, trade, border protection, business, and education. The possible twinning of the cities of Canberra, the capital of Australia, and Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, were also on the agenda (i.e. called twin towns or sister cities). Sister City relationships are twinning arrangements that build friendships as well as government, business, culture, and community linkages. Canberra currently has international Sister City relationships with Beijing in China and Nara in Japan. One example of existing
1 comment
Read more