Madonna in a Fur Coat was my final book for the #10books10decades challenge. This novel by Turkish author Sabahattin Ali is a quick read. I found it surprisingly tender and forward thinking for its time. It was originally published in 1943.

This novel begins in Ankara in the 1930s. The narrator gets a job with the help of an old friend, where he meets Raif Efendi, a coworker who is rarely moved to show any emotion, and seems to not give much of a care to anything. After Raif falls ill, the narrator gets to know him better, and learns about his past. When he was younger, he had a romance with an artist he met in Berlin after being taken by her painting. At first unrequited, it eventually grows into something more. Their relationship defies traditional gender stereotypes from the time, with Maria taking charge of defining their relationship while Raif follows her lead.

The book’s fatal flaw for me was that Raif is such a passive character. I almost always struggle with characters who are so unassertive. It bothers me IRL when someone always says “I don’t care” and doesn’t express preferences, and I feel the same about characters in books. Still, I found this story to be overall moving and worth reading.