A work by one of modern Turkish literature's most important writers, Sabahattin Ali, is to be translated into the English language for the first time.
The prominent author's 1943 book, “Kurk Mantolu Madonna" [The Fur Coated Madonna] will be published in English at the beginning of 2016, more than 70 years after its debut in Turkish.
The deal has been struck between Turkish copyright agency ONK and publishers Penguins UK.
A poet, writer and journalist, Sabahattin Ali was born in 1907. A critic of the then-government, he was murdered in 1948 by an unknown assailant in mysterious circumstances.
Rumors flourished later that his killer was a member of the national security service.
His revived work, The Fur Coated Madonna, centers on a post-WWI-era love story between a Turkish student and a German singer in Berlin.
Kurk Mantolu Madonna has already been published in German by Dorlemann and has seen four print editions in Russian, Croatian, Arabic and Albanian.
Speaking to The Anadolu Agency, managing director of ONK, Meric Gulec, said that they had been meeting with Penguin UK since the Frankfurt Book Fair last October and finalized the new publishing agreement in March.
“The book's latest success in Turkey was an important detail for them [Penguin UK]," said Gulec, referring to the book's renewed popularity among young Turkish readers.
According to the book's publishing rights owner in Turkey, YKY Publishing, the company released almost one million copies of the book since 1998.
“Its profound historical and political content, as well as being a romance novel, easily grasps young readers," Gulec added but did not speculate on who will be the possible translator.
Ali's work will also be published in Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Georgian, according to ONK.
Last year, Penguin translated another prominent Turkish writer, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar. His 1962 work – “The Time Regulation Institute" – was produced in English for the first time, with publishers calling it “a literary discovery."
