Asli Erdogan (who is no relation to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan) is a renowned novelist, columnist, and human rights activist. She was born in Istanbul in 1967. She studied computer engineering and physics, and wrote her dissertation at the European High Energy Physics Laboratory. She quit her graduate work in physics in Rio de Janeiro and devoted herself entirely to writing. She lived for two years in South America. Her first novel Kabuk Adam (“The Scab Man”) was published in 1994; her short story collection Mucizevi Mandarin (“The Miraculous Mandarin” was published in 1996. Her short story “The Wooden Birds” received the Deutsche Welle literary prize and was translated into nine other languages.