Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (2020) Simone de Beauvoir Price (2018) Václav Havel Price (2019) Erich Maria Remarque Price (2018) Tucholsky Award (2016) D. Welle Story Awards (1997) Sait Faik Story Awards (2010)
Aslı Erdoğan (born 8 March 1967) is a prize-winning Turkish writer, author,human rights activist, and columnist forÖzgür Gündem and formerly forRadikal, ex political prisoner, particle physicist. Her second novel has been published in English,[1][2] and eight books translated into twenty languages.
Aslı Erdoğan is a writer of literature and author of eight books, novels, novellas, collections of poetic prose and essays, translated into twenty languages including English, French, German, and published by various publishers such asActes Sud,Penguin Germany,The City Lights among others. She has worked as a columnist in various national and international papers, and she was arrested in 2016 for her collaboration with the pro-Kurdish newspaperÖzgür Gündem. Aslı Erdoğan has received several prizes in literature, arts and human rights such asSimone de Beauvoir Prize or theErich Maria Remarque Peace Prize. Her work has been adapted into theater and acted in Milan, Graz andAvignon,[3] into classical ballet, radio, a short film[4] and finally to opera. She is currently living in exile in Germany.[5]
Born inIstanbul, she graduated fromRobert College in 1983 and the Computer Engineering Department ofBoğaziçi University in 1988. She worked atCERN as aparticle physicist from 1991 to 1993 and received anMSc inphysics from Boğaziçi University as a result of her research there.[6] She began research for a PhD in physics inRio de Janeiro, Brazil before returning to Turkey to become a full-time writer in 1996.[7]
Her first story,The Final Farewell Note, won third prize in the 1990 Yunus Nadi Writing Competition. Her first novel,Kabuk Adam (Crust Man), was published in 1994 and was followed in 1996 byMucizevi Mandarin (The Miraculous Mandarin) a series of interconnected short stories. Her short storyWooden Birds received first prize fromDeutsche Welle radio in a 1997 competition and her second novel,Kırmızı Pelerinli Kent (The City in Crimson Cloak), received numerous accolades abroad and has been published in English translation.[7]
She was the Turkish representative ofPEN International'sWriters in Prison Committee from 1998 to 2000. She also wrote a column entitledThe Others for the Turkish newspaperRadikal, the articles from which were later collected and published as the bookBir Yolculuk Ne Zaman Biter (When a Journey Ends).[8]
From December 2011 to May 2012, at the invitation of the Literaturhaus Zürich and the PWG Foundation,[9] Erdoğan wasZürich's "writer in residence".[10]
She was a writer-in-resident for theICORN inKraków, Poland in 2016. After her return to Turkey, she continued to write for the pro-Kurdish dailyÖzgür Gündem.[11]
Demonstration in support of Erdoğan,Kraków, September 2016. The banner reads "Release Aslı Erdoğan and the political prisoners of the Turkish regime".
Erdoğan was arrested during the police raid onÖzgür Gündem on 16 August 2016, for being a member of the advisory board of the newspaper.[12][13] On 20 August, she was held inpretrial detention.[14]Özgür Gündem was quickly succeeded byÖzgürlükçü Demokrasi (Libertarian Democracy), which featured a daily column called 'Aslı’s Friends'.[15] After four months, she was released pending trial. Following the lifting of a travel ban in June 2017, she left Turkey for Germany, where she lives in exile.[16]
The City in Crimson Cloak (Turkish title:Kırmızı Pelerinli Kent) is a 1998 novel, which was republished in2007 bySoft Skull Press in English translation by Amy Spangler.[1]
Özgür, the young Turkish protagonist of the story, having deserted her past and secluded herself from outer world, is poor, hungry, and on the verge of a mental breakdown. She has a single weapon left in the all-out war she has declared against Rio de Janeiro: to write the city, which has trapped her and robbed her of everything.
Amy Benfer, writing forBarnes & Noble, states, "The novel might have been richer had Erdoğan taken advantage of the structure to interrogate Özgür's motives and perceptions more fully than Özgür herself can. But it does succeed as a sort of reverse postcard - the hazards of the tropics seen in the eyes of a woman from winter climes."[17]
The Stone Building and Other Places is a collection of three short stories and a novella ("The Morning Visitor," "The Wooden Birds," "The Prison," andThe Stone Building). The collection has become a best seller in Turkey.[18]
The interconnected short stories feature women whose lives have been interrupted by forces beyond their control: exile, serious illness, and the imprisonment of loved ones. These tales culminate in the novella; the "stone building" is a metaphor for the various oppressive institutions—prisons, police HQ's, hospitals, and psychiatric asylums—that dominate the lives of the characters.
Wooden Birds by Aslı Erdoğan at Boğaziçi University[19] andWords Without Borders[20]
Extract fromThe Miraculous Mandarin by Aslı Erdoğan at Boğaziçi University[21]
Four articles by Aslı Erdoğan were used in the Turkish State’s indictment against her:This is your father,[22]The diary of fascism: today,[23]The most cruel of months,[24]History Readings by a Madman[25]
Media related toAslı Erdoğan at Wikimedia Commons
