Madonna in a Fur Coat

An unremarkable clerk, hired out of pity by a firm in Ankara, shares an office with Raif Efendi, a translator nobody knows anything about. When this man, old before his time, falls ill, he asks the young clerk to burn a black notebook, then lets him read it for one night. It reveals Berlin in the 1920s and the self-portrait of a woman in a fur coat that Raif went to gaze at every day, until the painter, Maria Puder, spoke to him. The novel explores love, shyness and what a life keeps from a single encounter. Beneath a dull existence, Sabahattin Ali uncovers a passion told with restraint.