Turkey's wittiest and most controversial female columnist Turkey's columnists, like Perihan Magden, whose fiery outbursts, her combative independence and her steely conscience, are as important in shaping of public opinion as its news editors. Her writings have earned her a long string of public and private prosecutions in the past. In her two novels published in English translation, 'Two Girls' and 'The Messenger Boy Murders' the outspoken Turkish writer Perihan combines a flair for the grotesque with a humane sensibilities to evoke a world all her own. Perihan Magden was born in Istanbul to educated and artistically inclined parents.