The City In Crimson Cloak

OEzgur 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 OEzgur’s unfinished eponymous novel, with its autobiographical protagonist named OE, OEzgur’s story begins to emerge. Meanwhile, the narrator limns a single day of OEzgur’s life, which is in fact her last. As OEzgur follows OE 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
OEzgur’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.