Hot Take 3: Who Actually Rediscovered Madonna in a Fur Coat?

In this Hot Take, I look at how Sabahattin Ali’s Madonna in a Fur Coat moved through different forms of cultural gatekeeping—from its original publication in Türkiye, to Yapı Kredi’s institutional revival, Penguin Classics’ English translation, and its more recent circulation through BookTok. Using participatory culture as a digital-rhetoric lens, I argue that BookTok has not eliminated literary gatekeepers so much as changed who gets to participate in assigning cultural value.

Transcript

Spending time on BookTok, it can sometimes make it seem like TikTok has the power to pull an old book out of nowhere and suddenly make everyone read it. But Madonna in a Fur Coat made me realize that the story is more complicated than that.

Sabahattin Ali’s novel was originally published in Türkiye in 1943. Some of Ali’s contemporaries actually criticized it because they thought a romantic love story was a disappointing departure from the socially engaged writing they expected from him. Fast-forward several decades, though, and the same book became one of the most celebrated novels in Türkiye. It was translated into English by Penguin Classics in 2016, and more recently it has experienced another wave of popularity through BookTok.

The digital-rhetoric concept that helps me make sense of this is participatory culture. Henry Jenkins uses participatory culture to describe a media environment where audiences don’t simply consume culture. They also create, share, respond, recommend, remix, and contribute to what becomes culturally important.

BookTok makes that really visible. A reader can finish a book, make a thirty-second emotional video about it, use a hashtag like BookTok, and potentially introduce the book to thousands or even millions of other readers. Comments, shares, repeated formats, and recommendations allow the audience to participate in deciding what deserves attention.

But the trajectory of Madonna in a Fur Coat through popular culture shows why I don’t think BookTok actually eliminates cultural gatekeepers.

Before TikTok was involved at all, institutions had already played a major role in bringing the novel back into public attention. Yapı Kredi acquired the rights to Sabahattin Ali’s work in the 1990s and supported exhibitions, publications, archival projects, and commemorations around his legacy. The novel eventually became a massive bestseller in Türkiye and was already circulating on social media.

Then another gate opened. Penguin Classics translated the novel into English seventy-three years after its original publication. Penguin advertised it, placed it alongside established classics, and helped present Sabahattin Ali to a new Anglophone audience.

BookTok represents another stage in that process.

What changes on BookTok is who gets to participate in assigning value. You no longer have to be a publisher, literary critic, or bookseller to publicly tell thousands of people that a book matters.

And the rhetoric of those recommendations is often intensely emotional.

On Penguin’s own page for the novel, BookTok creator Jack Edwards is quoted using language like “yearning,” “fleeting happiness,” and “unrequited love.”

What interests me here is the language Penguin chooses to feature. This isn’t really the language of a traditional literary review. It’s affective and identity-based recommendation—the kind of rhetoric that circulates especially well on BookTok.

Someone doesn’t have to give you a ten-minute analysis of the novel. They can essentially say, “If you understand this feeling, you need to read this book.”

And what’s especially interesting is that Penguin is now using that reader-centered rhetoric itself.

That emotional identification becomes part of circulation. A reader responds to the book, turns that response into a recommendation, and other readers recognize themselves in the feeling being described.

But then TikTok’s algorithm decides which of those reader reactions get amplified. Publishers can see which books are gaining attention, and they can incorporate that popularity back into marketing.

So the audience has more power, but that power still operates through a platform and eventually reconnects with the publishing industry.

That’s why my main takeaway from Madonna in a Fur Coat is that BookTok hasn’t removed the gatekeepers. It has changed who gets to stand beside the gate.

Sources and Visual Attributions

Deniz Malaymar Buts, “Carving out a Niche in the Anglosphere”
Henry Jenkins / “Participatory Culture”
Penguin Classics, Madonna in a Fur Coat
Jack Edwards quotation featured by Penguin
Visual by Alan Murray | Source: Malaymar Buts (2026)