Madonna in a Fur Coat

A tale of young love and disenchantment, of missed opportunities and passion's elusive, flickering flame . . . reminiscent of Turgenev's First Love, with a hero every bit as gauche, and a twist every bit as bitter -- Toby Lichtig * Financial Times * The magical novel about a Turkish man who falls in love with an artist in 1920s Berlin ... recreates a vanished era and dramatises a doomed relationship, and does so with verve, depth and poignancy. The result is a miniature masterpiece. -- Malcolm Forbes * The National * A heart-breaker . . . it has the kind of indefinably powerful impact of The Great Gatsby -- Salley Vickers * Observer * A poignant coming-of-age tale, drenched in disillusionment. The gap between hope and reality, art and ordinary life, has been explored in many other novels, but rarely with the unaffected simplicity of Madonna in a Fur Coat. -- William Armstrong * Times Literary Supplement * Moving and memorable, full of yearning and melancholy ... reading it is like taking a literary minibreak -- Fiona Wilson * The Times * A gorgeously melancholic romance . . . a cautionary tale certain to beguile -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times * The surprise bestseller ... read, loved and wept over by men and women of all ages * Guardian *

Sabahattin Ali (1907-1948) was born in the Ottoman town of Egridere (now Ardino in southern Bulgaria). A teacher, novelist, short-story writer and journalist, he owned and edited a popular weekly newspaper called Marko Pasa. He is admired for the determination with which he defended his political beliefs, which are anchored through his writing. Madonna in A Fur Coat, first published in 1943, is his best loved work and a touchstone of Turkish literary culture which continues to resonate profoundly with readers young and old today. Maureen Freely is a writer, a Professor at Warwick University, and the Chair of Trustees of English PEN. She has published seven novels and numerous translations of twentieth century Turkish classics and contemporary authors including five books by the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk. Alexander Dawe has translated several works from French and Turkish including the short stories of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar and Sait Faik.