Sabahattin Ali

Sabahattin Ali was a Turkish novelist, short-story writer, poet and journalist, born in 1907 in Eğridere, then in the Ottoman Empire and now Ardino in Bulgaria.

His novels are Kuyucaklı Yusuf (1937), İçimizdeki Şeytan (1940) and Kürk Mantolu Madonna (1943), the last of which was translated as Madonna in a Fur Coat and became a bestseller in Turkey and abroad decades after his death.

He also published poetry and several collections of stories, including Sırça Köşk (1947), and co-founded the satirical magazine Marko Paşa with Aziz Nesin and Rıfat Ilgaz. His political writing brought repeated prosecutions and roughly fourteen months in the fortress prison at Sinop.

In April 1948 he was killed near the Bulgarian border while attempting to leave the country; his body was found that June.