Sabahattin Ali

'The pain of losing something precious can be forgotten over time. But our missed opportunities never leave us, and every time they come back to haunt us, we ache.'

A shy young man leaves his home in rural Turkey to learn a trade and discover life in 1920s Berlin. There, amid the city's bustling streets, elegant museums, passionate politics and seedy cabarets, a chance meeting transforms his life forever. Caught between his desire for freedom and his yearning to belong, he struggles to hold on to the new life he has found.

Madonna in a Fur Coat

serína

tara  (she/her)

What else is there left for me, but to spill out these words and then drown in them? Oh, Maria, why cant we sit by the window and talk? Why cant we open our hearts and souls to eachother, as we walk together in silence on a windy autumn evening? Oh, why arent you here with me? 

Perhaps I have needlessly shunned society for all these years. Perhaps, in refusing to believe them, I have treated people unfairly. Perhaps, had I looked, I might have found someone like you. Had I learned of your death sooner, I might have recovered in time to make the effort to find you in someone else. But it is all over now. Knowing the monumental and unforgivable injustice I have visited on my beloved, I lack the will to put things right. I have held the whole world in contempt, on account of having misjudged you; I have shut myself away. Now I can see the truth. All the same, I have no choice but to condemn myself to everlasting solitude. Life is a game that is only played once, and I lost. There is no second chance. . .

It should not have mattered so much where we were born, whose child we were. All that mattered was that two people had found each other and achieved rare happiness. The rest was incidental. It had no choice but to fall into place, giving way to that great felicity. 

But I knew in my heart that this was not how events would unfold. For our lives were governed by trivial details. Indeed, trivial details were what true life was made of. The logic in our minds had always been at odds with the logic of life itself. A woman is gazing out of a train window when a fleck of coal dust lands in her eye; without giving the matter a moment's thought, she rubs it in. A gesture as slight as this can end in a beautiful eye losing its power to see. Or a brick comes loose in the wind and crashes down on the head of an illustrious man. And what good would it do, to ask which is more important - an eye or a fleck of coal, a brick or a brain? We have no choice but to accept such accidents for what they are, along with all the others that life thrusts upon us. 

They were having fun. They were alive. While I stood apart, locked up inside my own head, and watched - not, as I now understood, from above, but from below. It was not a surfeit of idiosyncrasy that had led me to shun society. I had pulled away because there was a part of me missing. But life was meant to be loved, as these people were doing. They were taking their share of life, and giving something back. What was I in comparison? What did my soul ever do, apart from gnawing away at me like a woodworm? This gramophone, this wooden inn, this ice-covered lake, these snow-covered trees and this jumbled crowd: they were all busy with the tasks that life had given them. There was meaning in everything they did, even if I could not see at first glance. And I was but the wheel that had spun off its axle, still searching for reasons as I wobbled off into the void. No doubt I was the most useless man in the world. 

A soul only came forward when it found its twin, when it felt no need to rely on mere words to explain itself. . . It was only then that we truly began to live - live with our soul.

How easily people can read eachother! . . . And there I was, trying so hard to penetrate someone else's mind, to find out if the soul hiding inside it was ordered or in turmoil. For even the most wretched and simple-minded man could be a surprise, even a fool could have a soul whose torments were constant source of amazement. Why are we so slow to see this, and why do we assume that it is the easiest thing in the world to know and judge eachother? Why, when we are reluctant even to describe a wedge of cheese we are seeing for the first time, do we draw our final conclusions from our first encounters with people, and happily dismiss them?

Celina Irena Kuhn

Maria Puder had shown me I had a soul. And now, overcoming a habit of a lifetime, i could see a soul in her.

Jiya

She had swept me away from my dark and silent world, delivering me to the land of truth and light. 

For the first time since childhood, I drifted off to sleep without mediating on the meaninglessness of existence and the despairing of the day just passed, which had no more than a religion on of the one before, and had led nowhere.

We were silent for a while. I had so much to say to her, enough to fill whole years or an eternity…but at that moment, I couldn’t think of a single word.

How familiar her voice was! This must be because I was so intimately a taunted with every line in her face and could read between them.

Never before had I felt such happiness. I could feel my heart opening, as if for the first time. How was it that a person could bring such happiness to another without really doing anything at all? A friendly greeting, an innocent smile….and at the moment i wanted nothing else. I was the richest man in the world. 

Once again, I had revealed myself to be a puppet of my imagination, a captive of make-believe.

I cursed the world around me, with greater vehemence than ever before.

I had yet to learn that nothing in this world can ever match the marvels that we conjure up in our own minds.

I looked at this man who wished to leave nothing of himself behind, who, even as he moved towards death, wished to take his loneliness with him.

He had, I imagined, poured the soul he'd hidden from us all into these pages, and now he wanted to take it with him.

Didn’t think it was that dramatic or revolutionary as people are saying, though, i found it was a super realistic reflection of the patriarchial world, in the worst way to men. I know so many men who feel like this and they just succumb to the societal pressure. Not a norm to be an introverted avoidant respectful man, but the opposites are not accepted. Because they are aware of that norms, they act like they’re not one of them. How wrong is it to be shy? Why deemed shyness as a woman-only emotions. When i read the first part, i also thought this guy is such a pathetic man, get up! and do something! But when i finished i just realized that i was maybe one of the problems why men don’t open up more. Really need to change. 

However, speaking about the entertainment, i didn’t feel as quite page-turning or the yearns as i thought i would. It’s a bit underwhelming and short. Some parts describing his whole family tree felt too long. But books like this are better when transformed into big screen. 

korfai 

Didn’t think it was that dramatic or revolutionary as people are saying, though, i found it was a super realistic reflection of the patriarchial world, in the worst way to men. I know so many men who feel like this and they just succumb to the societal pressure. Not a norm to be an introverted avoidant respectful man, but the opposites are not accepted. Because they are aware of that norms, they act like they’re not one of them. How wrong is it to be shy? Why deemed shyness as a woman-only emotions. When i read the first part, i also thought this guy is such a pathetic man, get up! and do something! But when i finished i just realized that i was maybe one of the problems why men don’t open up more. Really need to change. 

However, speaking about the entertainment, i didn’t feel as quite page-turning or the yearns as i thought i would. It’s a bit underwhelming and short. Some parts describing his whole family tree felt too long. But books like this are better when transformed into big screen. 

gishelle

The story fell a bit too flat for my liking, although, what I enjoyed reading in this book was Maria Puder's dialogues. She was a woman of her own and i resonated with a lot of her thoughts and feelings.

It is quite overhyped on social media and it had been on my tbr for quite a long time so i got really underwhelmed when i read this. I want to give it another read sometime soon. 

march🐇

The story fell a bit too flat for my liking, although, what I enjoyed reading in this book was Maria Puder's dialogues. She was a woman of her own and i resonated with a lot of her thoughts and feelings.

It is quite overhyped on social media and it had been on my tbr for quite a long time so i got really underwhelmed when i read this. I want to give it another read sometime soon. 

Someone tattoo every word of Page 85 onto my soul. Never has anyone discriped love like this. When people say bring back yearning they usually mean a man from the victorian era, but they should all mean Raif. How can a book be this beautiful, yet leave me with a ache that will prob never settle. I have never read a book that made me this nostalgic and melancholic. Masterpiece. A true classic for a reason. A must read. 

wanted very badly to like this but it was like hey what if a miscommunication trope was 200 pages long. idk everyone just seemed needlessly miserable which #relatable but also just lost sympathy after he has a whole ass family that he admittedly feels nothing towards after having a segment mourning about how he wished he had an active father in his life. he starts off assuming the worst of maria (assuming she is out with other men when she's actually performing) and ends assuming the worst of her (assuming she is out with other men when she literally dies???) and i am like supposed to be convinced this is a real lover? maybe i need to try again but honestly i did everything in my power to enjoy this so i think started from annoyance would not fare much better. i will admit this was tragic but some of it was needlessly so! maybe i need to fall in love but also if this is what it transforms me into i think i'm ok!

tiff <3

This book made me feel so many emotions and I hope other people feel the same amount of despair and joy I did 

Ali pulls at the threads of emotion with the same instinctual autopilot as I make my morning coffee. The depth to which the soul offers itself up for examination in this book is something I usually encounter on midnight walks and drives back from vacation, these yearning pieces neglected but ever-presently waiting to be touched. A contemplation on what it means to open yourself up to someone, to create something of them for yourself, and to move beyond your reality to a point of no return, Madonna In A Fur Coat is a melancholy testament to the murderous condition of loneliness before and after love. Explored through a satirically apolitical, self-focused narrator, Ali has created a frighteningly summative portrayal of a generation's longing for more.

daphne

It’s a very easy read that I enjoyed. In my opinion, it’s a unique, and tragic love story. 

Madonna in a Fur Coat

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