“Perihan Mağden is one of the most inventive and outspoken writers of our time. The way she twists and turns the Turkish language, the delight she takes in the thrust and pull of popular culture, and her brilliant forays into subjects that everyone thinks about and then decides not to put into words, 'just in case' — these have earned her the love of her readers and the respect of her fellow writers.” These are the words in which Orhan Pamuk, one of Turkey’s most prominent novelists and the first Turkish Nobel Prize winner in Literature described Perihan Mağden.
Perihan Mağden is one of the most popular and controversial Turkish writers of the last decade. Those who follow her novels and essays on popular culture still reminisce about her biting articles from hunger strikes to Marilyn Monroe in what used to be one of the most popular columns in the history of Turkish media.
When Mağden had published her first two novels, Haberci Çocuk Cinayetleri (The Messenger Boy Murders) and Refakatçi (The Companion), as well as a poetry collection Mutfak Kazaları (Kitchen Accidents) in early 1990s, she was a blossoming writer known by a handful of readers who were experimenting on new writers. This all changed when she began her column in the daily Radikal in 1997. This on-and-off-and-on-again column made her a household name in Turkey for more than a decade.
After studying in some of the best schools in Turkey, Robert American High School and Boğaziçi University’s Psychology department, Mağden travelled to Japan, India and the USA until she settled back in Turkey and began focusing on a writing career.
Mağden sharpens her style
The wit, unique humour and sharp tongue in her column soon earned Mağden her first set of devoted followers who would devour her keen analyses, brave antagonism and fervent appetite for popular culture. In a time when there was no such thing as the internet, readers cut out copies of her articles and shared them with one another.
As Perihan Mağden moved full throttle on her journey to become a fixture in Turkey’s popular culture, her two relatively unknown novels began finding new readers. The Messenger Boy Murders, a unique blend of science fiction and murder mystery, was translated into English, Dutch, and Russian. Maureen Freely of Cornucopia wrote: "Set in a city that feels Russian but is populated with Chinese names, full of nineteenth-century languor but speckled with Hollywood references and overshadowed by a villainous fertility expert, it is difficult to categorise, impossible to put down.”
The more Mağden became popular, the more she started developing a critical, and at times uncompromising voice. Her criticism could be directed to anyone from the former editor-in-chief of Turkey’s biggest daily, Hürriyet, to a variety of delicate subjects like the high security “F-type” prisons and the mandatory military service. Her odes to popular culture figures like the legendary Turkish actress Türkan Şoray and the diva of Turkish pop music for half a century, Ajda Pekkan were replaced with an antagonism, which at times turned into vicious personal attacks.
Two girls and two boys
These attacks soon were directed to her readers. Mağden declared, “Don’t bother to read my articles if you haven’t read The Brothers Karamazov,” or “If you haven’t got the stomach to handle my articles, my views, my opinions, don’t bother reading at all. First of all, you don’t really understand what I am writing. You dimwits.” It was inevitable that her column was heading towards a doom. Soon, she decided to terminate her column. The object of her resentment in her farewell column was columnists in Turkish newspapers: “Those columnists blaming the politicians for not letting go of their seats, are you ready and willing to leave your columns?”
Distancing herself from the public eye, Mağden concentrated on writing novels. İki Genç Kızın Romanı, published in 2002, soon became a bestseller, and later was published in English as 2 Girls. The novel, about a special bond between two young women against the backdrop of a man-dominated, oppressive world, was hailed by the Independent with the following words: "Not since Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye has a writer animated adolescent anguish so vividly and compellingly.” The novel was adapted to screen by director Kutluğ Ataman in 2005.
Perihan Mağden’s public persona always clashed with her introvert and withdrawn personality. She refused to obtain an email address even in the hay-days of her column. In one interview, she said: “I don’t like people writing about me in the internet. I don’t like people asking me for articles. I don’t like giving interviews. I don’t like being photographed.”
She recently was in the media with her brave and controversial book Ali ile Ramazan (Ali and Ramazan), an against-the-grain and graphic love story between two homeless boys. While such a subject matter would have stirred hot debates in the media, Perihan Mağden had officially become the frightening aunt of Turkish media who nobody dared to mess with. Of course, this could hardly diminish the fact that she was also one of the best writers Turkey had seen.
