Madonna in a Fur Coat: Sabahattin Ali (Penguin classics)

One of my favourite books that i will not stop recommending to people throughout my life; So beautifully written and thought. Arrived in great condition too.

Enjoyed the read.

This is not a happy feel-good book but it is a book that deals with the marrow of life. The power of love and the ineffable fragility of life . To write like this requires an artist author: an observer of the essence of life. An unforgettable book - recommended to me by an 18 year old hotel concierge in Istanbul who wanted to converse so that he could practise his English and I could get insight into Turkish culture = serendipity

In General It's a well-written, interesting, slow-paced tragi-romance story, that reveals its characters internal qualms about themselves and their relationships, some level of those which are very rarely expressed in real life, but with which the reader can readily sympathise. Particularly dialogued is a desperate precious pure-hearted longing for a unique love pitted against apprehension, a wall of preperceptions and seemingly unassailable expectations. It's not terribly exciting in any regard, though may perhaps have been for the retrospectively feeble-hearted unstimulated romantics of the time with no multi-channel televisions, CGI action thrillers, nor hard-core pornography at their fingertips. That said, it is most pleasant and evocative to experience second-hand this slower sepia-paced life with its incessant trivial observations of minutiae long-gone and ever-present. Perhaps, if I read it in the bleak mid-winter, rather than in spring, I might be more touched by the desperate lonely sentiment of it all... Of the Subject(/Object) Character (Note, this reflection was written before the full conclusion of the story.) We must all content ourselves with aspects of reality we cannot change. Maria was possessed of a type of human conditional craving that can never be sated, always wanting something else, something more, something total and profound, a perfect lasting connection to her own self-obsessed zharring personas, skipping just ahead of her, a figment that could never be realised. The like of which leads so many to addictions. She was bereft in her dissatisfied solitude, forever vainly seeking that missing piece of her puzzle. She needed to calm the heck down and get over herself. So did Raif. Maybe even more so. Jebus heck.

Madonna in a Fur Coat is a beautiful gender role flipped tragic romance about a woman who says she's 'like a man' and the soft, emotional man who adores her. I really loved this book and read it in a day, hurrying to get to the end to find out what happened to Raif and Maria. I so enjoyed the book I listened to the audiobook too. Philip Arditti invests the text with pitch perfect emotion from Maria's fierce speeches to Raif's anxiety, even an audible smile of delight a key moment without ever overwhelming the text. I'd love to hear Arditti narrate more audiobooks.

This is a slow, precise account of one man, Raif Efendi as told by one of his colleagues. If the quality of a novel is based on the quality of the characterisation, then this is certainly a sure-fire hit. Raif is seemingly a nondescript man who makes no attempt to make friends or court popularity. Mocked by shallow juniors at work and derided by many members of his family, he barely seems to exist. Turkish life of the period enhances the bleak descriptions of the period. The story is told by a colleague who barely knows Raif, and that too adds a cold irony to the storytelling. Yet when Raif dies in poverty-stricken circumstances surrounded by bickering family, his diary comes to light. At this point, we have an elegiac flashback told in Raif's own words: sadness, pain and longing infuse this tale of a seemingly soulless man. A book to haunt the reader long after the last page.

Please read it

Great book.