The City in Crimson Cloak [Paperback]

Asli Erdogan (Author), Amy Spangler (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 28, 2007

Özgür is poor, hungry, and on the verge of a mental breakdown, with only one weapon against Rio: to write the city that has robbed her of everything. 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. As Özgür follows Ö through the shanty towns, Condomble rituals, and the violence and sexuality of the streets 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. Now available in translation, the book does for Rio what Joyce did for Dublin.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Turkish author Erdogan vividly captures the life and sin of underclass Rio de Janeiro in this darkly atmospheric novel, published in Turkey in 1998. A native of Istanbul, Özgür has spent the past two years barely surviving in Rio, a city overflowing with debauchery and violence. Lonely, penurious and hungry, Özgür's only solace is writing, and she has committed herself to staying in Rio until she does the city justice in her own book, The City in Crimson Cloak, which here becomes a novel within a novel. On the city's Fireworks Day, she makes her way through the favelas, or slums, gathering impressions of the chaos and carnality while recalling pieces of her autobiographical novel and journal entries. Özgür's battle to hold on to her own reality makes for a stark, nightmarish journey.
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Review

"Asli Erdogan's hands touch the human heart. Some of her sentences are verses of poetry...saturated with the bitter juice of life. Read this novel slowly, take your time, otherwise, you will be overwhelmed by the crossfire of images and metaphors." -- Cumhuriyet Book Review, Turkey

Asli Erdogan is an exceptionally sensitive and perceptive writer who gives us perfect literary texts. -- Orhan Pamuk

In language both limpid and lyrical, Asli Erdogan perfectly delineates the distance between [the protagonist] and the foreign city...It's the Brazilian street which rules this novel with the romantic savagery of the favela and the bandit, its love of life, its roughness, its disgust..." -- Le Monde, France

The description in Asli Erdogan's novel is breathtaking. The work is so much like its setting. Deep. Complicated. Raw. Difficult. Musical. I never wanted to leave a scene yet I couldn't wait for the next. This is a truly fine book. -- Percival Everett

Turkish Pepper, Brazilian Heat: [B]eyond a doubt the best I have reviewed this autumn. Overwhelming... In the same way that Dublin and Joyce belong together, or Praha and Kafka, for me from now on Rio will be inextricably bound together with the name Asli Erdogan. With this volume she writes herself into the dominant tradition of the last century's novels: the novel of the city." -- Aftenposten, Norway

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Soft Skull Press (October 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933368748
• ISBN-13: 978-1933368740
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,538,609 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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