One of Turkey's most challenging authors, Asli Erdogan has been a critical success both in Turkey and Europe. A former physicist who abandoned her scientific career for a literary one, Erdogan's first book, the novel The Shell Man was published in 1994. Erdogan's second novel, The City in Crimson Cloak, established her as a writer of formidable literary merit, gathering accolades abroad.
From 1998 to 2000, Erdogan, a human rights activist and former Turkish representative of PEN's Writers in Prison Committee, wrote a column for the Turkish newspaper Radikal entitled "The Others." Her articles were later collected and published as the book When a Journey Ends.
