Author: Ahmet Emre Çoban
Place: Turkey
Date: 04 June 2010
Aslı Erdoğan, named as one of the “50 promising writers of the future” by French literary magazine Lire, has established herself as one of the most renowned authors in Turkish literature in a short time, with her novels and stories being published also in a number of countries worldwide.
Erdoğan was born in 1967 in Istanbul. After receiving her M.S. degree in Physics from the Boğaziçi University, she continued her scientific career as a high energy physicist at European Nuclear Research Center (CERN) in Switzerland between the years ’91 and ’93. She quit her academic career after her first novel, Kabuk Adam (The Shell Man) came out in 1994, at a time when she was pursuing a PhD in Rio de Janeiro. Having spent two more years abroad, in South America, she returned to Turkey. She has exclusively concentrated on her work as an author since then.
“For me,” she stated in one of her recent interviews, “writing is a journey to immortality and also to an absolute death. You can go far away from yourself, and at the same time, you always arrive at yourself again. So writing is a journey on this circle.” None of her works can be easily categorised as a short story or novel or even a poem. In other words, she sets on a journey between different genres of literature, a trademark she has set ever since Kabuk Adam.
Her first story “Son Elveda” (“The Final Farewell Note”) won a third prize in one of the most prestigious literature competitions in Turkey, the Yunus Nadi Prize, in 1990. After Kabuk Adam, a romance story between a young female scientist and a Caribbean man, she collected her story-like poetic texts under the title Mucizevi Mandarin (The Miraculous Mandarin), in 1996. One year later, her short story “Tahta Kuşlar” (“Wooden Birds”) won the first prize in the Deutsche Welle competition. This story, which was selected by an international jury from among more than 800 competing stories, has been translated into nine different languages. Erdoğan's second novel, Kırmızı Pelerinli Kent (The City in Crimson Cloak, 1998), brought the dark-side of Rio de Janeiro into light. Then, until 2005, her only publication was a compilation of articles under the title Bir Yolculuk Ne Zaman Biter? (When Does a Journey End?) in 2000. The articles in this book were the ones she had written for Radikal, one of the major dailies in Turkey, between 1998-2000.
“I consecrate life, naively.”
Erdoğan has commented her selection as one of the “50 promising writers of the future” by Lire, by saying: “Sure, I consider Lire as an important journal, and when I saw also A.L. Kennedy among the names of the nine women in that list, I was really proud of myself. Even though I do not know whether I deserve this or not, I know the value of this selection. But on the lonely nights when I am looking at the blank white papers and stumbling from one sentence to another, applauses cannot be as helpful as cigarettes.”
In 2005, Hayatın Sessizliğinde (In the Silence of Life) was published. This book is a collection of all the texts photographed, choreographed, exhibited and also acted by Serra Yılmaz, a renowned Turkish actress. In her last book, Taş Bina ve Diğerleri (Stone Building and Others, 2009), Erdoğan brought together a series of short stories focusing on violence. She explained her attitude towards these stories: “A melody can be heard in the Stone Building. This was what I wanted to convey in this book: My friends, I tried to narrate a story, but I cannot narrate it; this story is a stranger to me, although it is mine. But I know that melody. This melody follows the path, on which we all walk, since we are all mortal. And we all know this melody. We are all included in this melody, not only the tortured, but also the torturers themselves. This melody contains everything coming from the essence of a human being. I do not know any greater consecration. I can say that I consecrate life, naively.”
