Writing as Judgment or Scream

A Conversation with Ash Erdogan.

- Erkut Tokman

After finishing a master’s degree in physics and writing her thesis on the Higgs boson particle, Turkish writer Ash Erdogan (b. 1967, Istanbul) worked for two years at CERN as a particle physicist then moved to Rio de Janeiro. After the publication of her first novel, The Shell Man (1994), she quit her scientific career and devoted herself to writing. Her third book, The City in Crimson Cloak (2001), brought her international recognition. With this novel, often described as a modern classic, Erdogan was chosen as one of “Fifty Writers of the Future” by the French magazine Lire. Back in Turkey, Erdogan began working as a columnist for oppositional newspapers, and after the failed coup attempt of July 2016 she was arrested on the pretext that she had been a literary adviser to a pro-Kurdish newspaper. Erdogan was released after a worldwide human rights campaign, but her trial still continues. In July 2017 the French government awarded her the Légion d’Honneur, but her travel request to receive it was only recently approved. After an initial phone conversation, we met on Heybeliada (Princes’ Islands), near Istanbul, to continue our exchange.

Erkut Tokman: You’ve said that your books, starting from your first novel, The Shell Man, are in the form of novels and short stories but are difficult to place in certain genre categories with set boundaries. You’ve also mentioned that you see yourself as an autobiographical writer. How do you account for these preferences?