How could the popularity of Kürk Mantolu Madonna in Turkey over the last decade be explained? Jirapon Boonpor S1653032 MA Middle Eastern Studies Professor Dr Erik-Jan Zürcher Leiden University Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One Kürk Mantolu Madonna’s Past Receptions 15 Chapter Two Book Readers’ particularities and Kürk Mantolu Madonna’s characteristics 30 Chapter Three Contextualising Popular Views and Romantic Realism 47 Conclusion 66 Bibliography 70 1 Introduction “Madonna in a Fur Coat makes a glorious comeback.”1 “Sabahattin Ali’s Madonna in a Fur Coat – the surprise Turkish bestseller”2 “The mysterious woman who inspired a bestselling novel”3 These are some of the several newspapers and magazines’ headlines appearing in mid 2016 when the English translated version - Madonna in a Fur Coat - of the Turkish novel Kürk Mantolu Madonna was released. These articles introduce the decades-old Turkish novel which has gained an unprecedented degree of popularity, rather surprisingly, in the past decade in Turkey. Kürk Mantolu Madonna is a story written in Turkish language by Sabahattin Ali, a Turkish journalist, poet and writer who is remembered for his Leftist political stance and articulated criticism towards the Turkish Republic’s Kemalist one-party state of the 1930s and 1940s. Born in 1907 in the Ottoman sancak (district) of Gümülcine (modern-day Greek city of Komitini) in the eastern part of the Ottoman eyalet (province) of Rumelia, Sabahattin Ali was a citizen of the Ottoman Empire and then the newly established Turkish Republic. Therefore, he witnessed his native empire’s transforming into a nation-state. Apart from that, Ali experienced the development in Europe leading up to World War II while studying in Potsdam, Germany from 1928 to 1930. Unfortunately, his prolific literary output abruptly ended when he was murdered in 1948, an incident believed to be because of his anti-government advocacy. Nonetheless, Ali is considered one of the most prominent Turkish literary figures of the early period 1 Anadolu Agency, ‘Madonna in a Fur Coat makes a glorious comeback’, Hurriyet Daily News, 2016, <http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/madonna-in-a-fur-coat-makes-a-glorious-comeback.aspx? pageID=238&nID=98840&NewsCatID=386> (22 January 2017). 2 Maureen Freely, ‘Sabahattin Ali’s Madonna in a Fur Coat – the Surprise Turkish Bestseller’, The Guardian, 2016, <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/21/sabahattin-ali-madonna-fur-coat-rereadin g> (22 January 2017). 3 Emma Jane Kirby, ‘The Mysterious Woman Who Inspired a Bestselling Novel’, BBC News, 2016, <http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36213246> (22 January 2017). 2 of the Turkish Republic. Kürk Mantolu Madonna is one of his three novels and arguably the best-known Turkish classic literature in Turkey in the last decade. This bestselling Turkish novel is the primary interest of this thesis. Essentially a love story without conspicuous political message, Kürk Mantolu Madonna is set during the interwar periods in Ankara and Berlin. The novel consists of two related stories of different time periods. In the first part of the story, an unnamed narrator, who lives in 1940s Ankara, struggles with economic problems as a result of a worldwide economic crisis. He loses his job in banking sector and later manages to acquire a bank clerk position through a friend’s connections in another bank. Social and economic developments of the setting are realistically portrayed, exemplifying Sabahattin Ali’s regarded pioneering of social realism in Turkish literature. At his new workplace, the narrator meets Raif, an older co-worker whom other colleagues call by an Ottoman title of Efendi. Initially, the narrator perceives Raif Efendi as a cold, isolated and ignored person, but gradually, having to share an office with him, develops friendship with him. After that the narrator learns about Raif Efendi’s earlier life which is interesting, something inconceivable on the surface of Raif Efendi’s aging, lethargic, unmotivated and downhearted exteriority. Through a black covered notebook which Raif Efendi keeps in his office desk’s drawer, the narrator learns about Raif’s few years living in Berlin. The beginning of the black notebook is dated 1933, but the events written in the notebook have happened before - around 1924. Then the story in the book becomes the second part of the novel, of which Raif, as a young man, is the main protagonist. Raif, a young and naïve Turkish man, is sent by his family to learn soap trade in Berlin. There he meets a debonair yet puzzling German woman, an artist whose Madonna-like self-portrait mesmerises Raif and makes him keep coming back to see the portrait. Raif’s encounter with Maria Puder, the German artist, turns into friendship, and later their friendship develops into an ambiguous romance. Unfortunately, their romance abruptly halts when Raif has to return to Turkey because of his father’s death. Raif plans to settle and establish himself first before calling for Maria Puder to join him in Turkey. However, shortly after his arrival back in Turkey Maria’s correspondence with him ceases and that leaves him miserably puzzled. Raif resolves to get on with life – 3 marrying a Turkish woman whom he is not entirely in love with and working on the futile inherited land. His scanty fortune eventually dries up and Raif takes up a job as a German to Turkish translator in a bank in Ankara. Years later, Raif accidentally comes across his former co-lodger from his accommodation in Berlin. This lady co-lodger is a distant relative of Maria Puder. Through her, Raif learns that he and Maria have a child together and that Maria has passed away a week after her giving birth to their daughter. As a result of overwhelming grief from the unanticipated news, Raif Efendi becomes closed up, miserable and unenthusiastic to live. Kürk Mantolu Madonna’s contribution to Turkish and world literature is beyond doubt worthwhile and interesting, but a literary analysis of this novel is not within the scope of this thesis. Rather, this paper is interested in its current popularity in Turkey, in other words, the novel’s interactions with today’s Turkish readership. One of the most interesting aspects of Kürk Mantolu Madonna is that it was written over seven decades ago but over the last decade or so it has become extremely popular in Turkey. Over the last ten years, the novel has been in Turkey’s top-ten bestselling lists. It was number one bestseller from 2014 to 2016, with total sales of 750,000 copies over the three years’ period. In 2015 alone, 350,000 copies of Kürk Mantolu Madonna were sold. These figures are extraordinary for Turkey’s book market. In 2015, Kafamda Bir Tuhaflık (Strangeness in My Mind), the 2014-released novel of Orhan Pamuk, the winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature and one of the most popular contemporary Turkish writers, sold 231,000 copies, over 100,000 copies less than Kürk Mantolu Madonna. Turkish Librarians' Association (Türk Kütüphaneciler Derneği) reports that Kürk Mantolu Madonna was the most borrowed book of 2015. On Instagram, a social media very popular in Turkey, there are over twelve thousands posts with hashtag #kurkmantolumadonna.4 In May 2016, Kürk Mantolu Madonna is translated into English and published, titled Madonna in a Fur Coat, by Penguin Classics, joining other 11 foreign-language translated versions of the novel. It is undeniable that Kürk Mantolu Madonna is one of the most celebrated Turkish novels in the last decade. This paper is intrigued by the sudden, unexpected and 4 As of 24 October 2016 4 unprecedented nature of the novel’s becoming very popular in Turkey over the past decade. It aims to understand why this 1940s novel has become popular to such a degree in Turkey in the last decade. Journalists, rather than academics, seem to be more receptive to the phenomenal rise of Kürk Mantolu Madonna to popularity. There are several magazine and newspaper articles about the novel’s recent popularity. These include interviews with translators, publishers and related figures of the novel, and analyses of what could be reasons for Kürk Mantolu Madonna’s unprecedented degree of popularity. Maureen Freely, one of the two of the English translators of the novel who has also translated works of a few internationally known Turkish writers including Orhan Pamuk and Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, associates the novel’s current hype with young Turkish people and their political struggles with the current government of Turkey. Freely is quoted to be opining that the young Turkish youths protesting at Gezi park in 2013 were asking for something no different from what Raif and Maria found in Berlin which was freedom to express their true natures and shape their own lives, according to their own principles and ideals. 5 In Freely’s opinion, Kürk Mantolu Madonna reminds the youths at a time when the state tries to intrude their daily life that going against the state is possible. She asserts that the Turkish youths at Gezi Park protests were encouraged by Ali’s political activities and the love in his works.6 Freely’s analysis on a basis of Sabahattin Ali’s political legacy is similar to how most academics emphasise Ali’s Leftist political motivation in addition to his social realist portrayal of the life of Anatolian peasants. Freely’s analysis is valuable to this study that it brings out factors – political legacy attached to the novel’s author and a section of the novel’s fan – which could be investigated further. Meriç Güleç, the managing director of ONK, the copyright agency which holds the rights to publish Kürk Mantolu Madonna, asserts that the novel’s recent bestsellerdom is because of its historical and political contents, and an idealised 5 Emre Kizilkaya, ‘Why an old-fashioned novel is trending among Turkey's youth’, Al Monitor, 2016, <http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/05/turkey-sabahattin-ali-novel-trending-am ong-madonna.html#ixzz4N3xl6SXU> (22 January 2017).