The City in Crimson Cloak - Aslı Erdoğan

The main character of "the city in crimson red" is a young woman called Özgür, her name means free in Turkish. She is alone, penniless, very hungry, and on the verge of a mental breakdown in a strange, far away city, Rio. She says the city has robbed her of everything and her only weapon against Rio is writing a novel.

We, the reader are reading the bits and pieces of Özgür's unfinished eponymous novel, with its autobiographical protagonist named Ö.

Özgür's story begins to emerge. Meanwhile, the narrator limns a single day of Özgür's life, which is in fact her last. In the poorest part of the city, being witness to violence, sexuality, lost lives Özgür's journey is to her own death, the narrator searches for a way to make peace with life, a route to catharsis. The two concentric novels, the borderline between the two Rio's — Özgür's Rio as a metaphor for death and Rio as life — begin to blur.

Asli Erdogan’s brilliantly evocative, experimental second novel was a major hit in Turkey and Europe. The book does for Rio what Joyce did for Dublin.

The city in crimson cloak is a major work of the Turkish writer. This novel showed her talents as a modern writer in Turkey and abroad. It can be refered as a poem - novel. A poetry of the twilight zone.

Born in 1967, raised in a upper-middle class Istanbul family. Graduated from an ancient American Collage of the city, Robert Collage. Than studied computer engineering and physics in Bosphorous University. After graduation worked at CERN, went to Amazons, traveled to many countries.

Than gave up her career in science and became a writer. Her first novel -kabuk adam- was published in 1994, the city with crimson cloak brought fame to her in local and international world.

She is an activist of human rights, writes poetry, short stories, travel and political articles in various media.

Aslı Erdoğan was arrested due to her poletical articles in a newspaper on 17 Auğust 2016 , she was in prison and waiting for her trial. After 132 days of pre-trail detention on 30 December 2016 she had her trail and is released.

Aslı said during her interrogation: “I have written seven novels, as I am a person of literature. They have been translated into 15 languages. I have no relationship whatsoever with any terror organization. My advisory board work absolutely does not interfere in what is written, or the publication policy. I don’t accept any of the accusations against me.”