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  • Published: 20 July 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241422267
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $26.00

Madonna in a Fur Coat




The international bestselling tale of love and loss in 1920s Berlin, now a Penguin Classics paperback

'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.

  • Published: 20 July 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241422267
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $26.00

Praise for Madonna in a Fur Coat

A gorgeously melancholic romance . . . a cautionary tale certain to beguile

Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

A poignant coming-of-age tale, drenched in disillusionment. The gap between hope and reality, art and ordinary life, has been explored in many other novels, but rarely with the unaffected simplicity of Madonna in a Fur Coat.

William Armstrong, Times Literary Supplement

A heart-breaker . . . it has the kind of indefinably powerful impact of The Great Gatsby

Salley Vickers, Observer

The magical novel about a Turkish man who falls in love with an artist in 1920s Berlin ... recreates a vanished era and dramatises a doomed relationship, and does so with verve, depth and poignancy. The result is a miniature masterpiece.

Malcolm Forbes, The National

A tale of young love and disenchantment, of missed opportunities and passion's elusive, flickering flame . . . reminiscent of Turgenev's First Love, with a hero every bit as gauche, and a twist every bit as bitter

Toby Lichtig, Financial Times

Moving and memorable, full of yearning and melancholy ... reading it is like taking a literary minibreak

Fiona Wilson, The Times

The surprise bestseller ... read, loved and wept over by men and women of all ages

Guardian