The City in Crimson Cloak, Paperback

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