Why an old-fashioned novel is trending among Turkey's youth
A romantic Turkish novel first published in 1943 has finally been translated into English this month after becoming a social media sensation, coinciding with the third anniversary of the Gezi Park protests that shook Turkey and its ruling party.
"Kurk Mantolu Madonna" ("Madonna in a Fur Coat") by Sabahattin Ali is a highly quotable book on issues such as love, relationships, loneliness, coincidences and miracles. But why is the 1940s novel still so popular in today's Turkey, and linked to a political event such as the Gezi Park protests?
The author lived in Germany between 1928 and 1930 and was shocked by the rise of Nazism there. As a left-wing poet, teacher and journalist, he returned home and became an outspoken critic of the single-party regime in the early years of the Turkish Republic. He serialized "Madonna in a Fur Coat" in a newspaper in 1941, two years before it would be published as a book.
He was imprisoned over his nonfiction writing, including satirical works slamming the government in humor magazines. He was arrested for a poem criticizing President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s policies and released in the general amnesty process.
Ali's fiction got him into hot water, too. His novel "Icimizdeki Seytan" ("The Devil Within") drew the ire of ultranationalists. He finally decided to leave Turkey in 1948, but was killed near the Bulgarian border by an unknown assailant in a murder widely attributed to Turkey’s secret service.
