In Ankara, a young clerk shares his office with Raif Efendi, a quiet translator about whom nobody knows anything. When Raif falls ill, he asks the young man to burn a black notebook, then lets him read it first, for one night. In it we discover the Berlin of the 1920s, and the portrait of a woman in a fur coat that Raif used to come and gaze at every day.
Long forgotten, this novel by Sabahattin Ali has become one of the most widely read books in Turkey: the story of a shy man whose whole life comes down to a single encounter.
Told like a confidence, the novel is a moving read in the language you are learning.
