cover image The City in Crimson Cloak

The City in Crimson Cloak

Asli Erdogan. Soft Skull Press, $14.95 (168pp) ISBN 978-1-933368-74-0

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, ozgur has spent the past two years barely surviving in Rio, a city overflowing with debauchery and violence. Lonely, penurious and hungry, ozgur'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. ozgur's battle to hold on to her own reality makes for a stark, nightmarish journey.