CANR
WORK TITLE: There Are Rivers in the Sky
WORK NOTES:
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BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.elifshafak.com/
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NATIONALITY: Turkish
LAST VOLUME: CANR 272
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born October 25, 1971, in Strasbourg, France; daughter of Nuri Bilgin (a philosopher) and Safak Atayman (a diplomat); married Eyup Can (a journalist); children: Sehrazat (daughter), Emir (son).
EDUCATION:Middle East Technical University, M.Sc., Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. Has been an educator in England and Turkey; University of Arizona, former assistant professor of Near Eastern studies; St Anne’s College, Oxford University, lecturer, became honorary fellow. Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA, visiting fellow, 2002-03; University of Michigan, visiting scholar in women’s studies, 2003-04. European Council on Foreign Relations, founding member.
MEMBER:Royal Society of Literature (fellow and vice president).
AWARDS:Mevlana Prize, 1998, for Pinhan; Turkish Writers’ Association Best Novel of the Year Award, 2000, for Mahrem; Five Colleges Women’s Studies Research Center fellowship, 2002; Independent Foreign Fiction Prize shortlist, 2005, for The Flea Palace; The Art of Coexistence Award, Turkish Journalists and Writers Foundation, 2009; Awards Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, France, 2010; Ambassador of Culture Action Europe Campaign, 2010; Marka 2010 Award, Turkey; Prix ALEF, 2011; Booker Prize shortlist, and Book of the Year and Fiction Book of the Year, both Blackwell, all 2019, all for 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World; Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, 2020; Halldór Laxness International Literature Prize, 2021; Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist, 2022, for The Island of Missing Trees.
WRITINGS
Contributor to anthologies, including Democracy: Eleven Writers and Leaders on What It Is—and Why It Matters, Profile Books (London, England), 2024. Contributor to periodicals, including the Boston Globe, Economist, San Francisco Chronicle, and Washington Post. Contributor to daily and monthly periodicals in Turkey.
SIDELIGHTS
Elif Shafak is a novelist of Turkish descent celebrated as the nation’s most famous female writer. Her works have raised the indignation of some segments of Turkish society. While modern Turkey seeks to be a secular society, Shafak’s novels recall the country’s older, more Islamic culture. “In Turkey, my fiction has been, from time to time, targeted by some rigidly Kemalist intellectuals who have accused me of betraying the nationalist project,” the author commented in Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism.
Shafak was born in France, [open new]where her father was studying for a doctorate in philosophy. Her parents separated when she was young, and at age five her mother brought her to Ankara. For the next five years she was raised primarily by her grandmother, allowing her mother to return to university in order to become a diplomat. After learning several languages and graduating, her mother was hired by Turkey’s foreign ministry and posted to Spain. Enrolled at a well-to-do international school in Madrid, the young Shafak was the only Turkish student. Concerning this period of her life Shafak told the Guardian, “I had to learn Spanish very fast. I had to learn English very fast, and I really cherished that experience. To be able to read Don Quixote in Spanish; to suddenly discover that there’s a vast literature in English that I could now access — that was the brilliant part. The difficult part was keeping up with the other kids. I was a massive introvert and I was bullied at school a lot.” About the beginnings of her career, Shafak told Rachel Cooke of the London Observer, “I started writing fiction when I was very young, not because I wanted to be an author, but because I thought life was really boring. I needed books in order to stay sane. To me, story land was much more colourful and enticing than the real world. The desire to be a writer only came in my 20s.”[suspend new]
Shafak has lived and worked in Germany, Jordan, the United States, and England. On her home page, Shafak commented on her role as a writer with feet in more than one culture: “I like to think of my writing as a compass. One leg of this compass is solidly based in Istanbul and the culture I grew up with. In this sense my fiction has solid roots. The other leg of the compass, however, draws a wide circle and travels the whole wide world. My fiction is cosmopolitan and multicultural. Therefore my writing is both local and universal.” On the Penguin website, Shafak remarked on what else contributes to the universality in her writing: “As a novelist, I believe that a writer needs to have a bisexual pen. A writer needs to be both man and woman while writing fiction. The masculine and the feminine in me live side by side. In my daily life I have to suppress this plurality because this is what it means to be ‘normal’ in this society. But when I am writing my novels I set myself free. I can be both man and woman.”
[resume new]Speaking with the Guardian, Shafak explained her midcareer decision to start writing her novels in English: “It was liberating, because being a novelist in Turkey is really hard, and being a woman is even harder. Everything you say, everything you write, can be attacked, targeted; you can be put on trial, exiled, imprisoned—words are heavy, you know. Writing in another language gave me the cognitive distance that I needed to be able to take a closer look at where I come from.”[suspend new]
The Gaze and The Flea Palace
The Gaze is a metaphysical novel about “the sacred, and the female body that must search for its elusive autonomy while being encroached upon by the Gaze—of a masculine God, of society, of the lover,” according to a contributor to Meridians. The story covers two centuries, ending with the life of a bulimic woman who suffered sexual abuse in Istanbul as a child.
Shafak’s novel The Flea Palace was a best seller in Turkey and focuses on the intertwining lives of people living in an apartment building. The novel’s theme, according to the Meridians contributor, is “the seen and the unseen degradation—moral, physical, social as well as cultural—in the heart of the aging city of Istanbul.”
The Saint of Incipient Insanities
The Saint of Incipient Insanities is Shafak’s first novel written in English. It follows three foreign students who have come to the United States: political science student Omer, whose heritage is in the Islamic faith; Spanish dental student Piyu, who is Catholic; and Abed, a Moroccan student interested in biotechnology who is a devout Muslim.
“Despite their differences in culture and language, the three men’s outsider status … binds them together while each struggles to find where he resides in spirit,” wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor. Michael Spinella, writing in Booklist, commented that the author “presents a masterful command of language, which she uses cleverly, humorously, and engagingly.” Diane Anderson-Minshall, writing in Curve, called the book a “heartbreaking tale … that centers around culture, exile, and belonging.” A contributor to the Economist commented that the author “has woven a tragicomic tapestry of quirky and lovable twenty-somethings struggling to find themselves in America.”
The Bastard of Istanbul
Shafak’s novel The Bastard of Istanbul, also written originally in English, not only generated considerable critical interest but resulted in the author being charged in 2006 under a Turkish criminal code for “insulting Turkishness.” Under Article 301 of the code, Shafak would have faced a prison term of three years if she had been convicted of the crime. Dozens of writers, journalists, and intellectuals had already been charged under the code by the time attention fell on Shafak. Based on a complaint filed by lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz, the case was originally dropped, but on appeal to a higher court it was reinstated and sent to trial. The case astonished and outraged supporters from around the world.
“The charges against Shafak open up new ground,” commented Richard Lea in the Guardian. “She is not accused of ‘insulting Turkishness’ because of her campaigning journalism or her academic work, but for remarks made by a fictional character in her latest novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, ” Lea reported. In the book, an Armenian character speaks of the mass killings of Armenians by Turks in 1915, calling the slayings “genocide” and referring to the “Turkish butchers” who committed the murders. Turkey adamantly refuses to acknowledge the killings as genocide. For her character’s remarks, Shafak was subjected to the rigors of the criminal system in Turkey even as she was pregnant with her first child. Shafak did not attend the trial, having given birth just days earlier, but in September 2006, she was acquitted. She and her supporters were relieved by the verdict, although the nationalists who had originally charged her were infuriated, and riot police had to intervene in scuffles outside the courthouse, noted a reporter on the British Broadcasting Corporation Web site. The case reinforced the importance of defending “the autonomy of art, and of literature,” Shafak stated in the British Broadcasting Corporation article.
The Bastard of Istanbul is an “astonishingly rich and lively story,” according to a writer for Kirkus Reviews, about a multigenerational Turkish family of women living together in Istanbul. The four middle-aged Kazanci sisters—Banu, religious and clairvoyant; Feride, a neurotic feminist; Gevriye, a moody and emotional history teacher; and Zeliha, the sensual and gorgeous owner of a tattoo parlor—live with their mother and maternal grandmother. Their brother, Mustafa, was sent to America years before in order to avoid the perceived curse that kills Kazanci men before they reach their forty-first birthday. Into the Istanbul household comes another resident, Aysa, the illegitimate daughter of the rebellious Zeliha, who refuses to identify or even acknowledge the child’s father. As Aysa grows up, sensitive and defensive about her lack of a father, she takes refuge from her unusual home life with the intellectuals of Istanbul. There, Aysa takes up a viewpoint on life that denies the importance of the past and the influence of history on the present. In the United States, another family is assembled that will eventually intersect with the Kazanci’s in Turkey. Armanoush is born to an Armenian father and American mother. When they divorce, Armanoush’s mother marries Mustafa Kazanci, who has grown indifferent to his Turkish heritage. As a child, Armanoush spends time with her father’s affectionate Armenian family, and there she learns about the long-term conflict between Turkey and Armenia over the 1915 massacre of Armenians by the Turks. In an effort to find out more about her family history, she travels to Istanbul, where she meets and stays with the Kazancis. The specter of the 1915 genocide again arises when Armanoush tells the disbelieving family the history of Turkish and Armenian bitterness—tellingly, the Kazanci family recognizes no sense of Turkish involvement or responsibility for the murders. Even more revealing of the country’s modern interpretation of the event, Armanoush’s intellectual friends deny that a genocide occurred at all. As a friendship develops between Aysa and Armanoush, ethnic, familial, and personal histories and myths are propelled forward on a collision course, where they will eventually clash when Mustafa himself arrives in Istanbul with a long-held, shattering family secret. The Kirkus Reviews contributor called the novel “a hugely ambitious exploration of complex historical realities handled with an enchantingly light touch.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer named it an “entertaining and insightful ensemble novel.” Booklist critic Donna Seaman declared it to be an “intricate and vibrant saga of repression and freedom, cultural clashes and convergences, pragmatism and mysticism, and crimes and retribution.”
The Forty Rules of Love
In Shafak’s next novel, The Forty Rules of Love, Ella Rubinstein is a bored Boston homemaker whose life becomes more interesting when she is assigned a literary manuscript to review about the thirteenth-century Muslim teacher Rumi. The manuscript is written by a Sufi photographer name Aziz. Throughout the novel, Ella, Aziz, and Rumi’s stories grow increasingly entwined.
Reviewing the work for National Public Radio, Alan Cheuse noted: “ The Forty Rules of Love is a little kitschy at times, but that’s part of the fun of it.” London Guardian contributor Rebecca Abrams observed: “Shafak has taken a significant risk in The Forty Rules of Love in making Ella a rather dull character, certainly at the start of the novel—the kind of woman you wouldn’t want to have coffee with because you know she’ll just drone on about the kids. Shafak agrees, but defends the decision.” London Independent contributor Alev Adil lauded: “With its timely, thought-provoking, feel-good message, The Forty Rules of Love deserves to be a global publishing phenomenon.” Library Journal contributor Susanne Wells, claimed that the work “may appeal to fans of Nicholas Sparks or Robert James Waller,” and a Kirkus Reviews contributor criticized: “Shafak should have dropped Ella’s story, with its preachy spiritual ruminations, and stuck to Rumi’s odyssey.” A Publishers Weekly contributor described the work as a “curious blend of mediocre hen lit and epic historical.” Booklist contributor Donna Seaman lauded: “As in her previous book, … Shafak … boldly links East and West in converging narratives.”
Black Milk
The birth of Shafak’s first child in 2006 sent her into a tailspin, suffering from postpartum depression and reassessing her life and goals. The result is a 2007 memoir, a best seller in Turkey, that was translated into English in 2011 as Black Milk: On Writing, Motherhood, and the Harem Within, a memoir in which she notes her despair and fear that she could never be a good mother and could never balance parenthood and her career. For a time Shafak came to distrust words and stopped writing, plagued by the harem within of the subtitle, the voices of varying aspects of her own character which she dubs her “Thumbelinas.” These include the cynical intellectual; the ambitious, goal-oriented achiever; and variously the spiritual, material, lustful, or practical personas all bickering and fighting for primacy. Exacerbating the situation were the facts that Shafak had always looked at herself as independent and as a writer, not a mother; that her husband was away during these months, serving his mandatory military service in Turkey; and that she had to endure the stress of the trial mounted against her for supposed denigration of Turkishness in her novel The Bastard of Istanbul. Shafak extends this discussion beyond her own experiences, however, interspersing and at times comparing her life experiences with those of other famous female authors, including Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Zelda Fitzgerald, Ayn Rand, and Alice Walker, among others.
Writing in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Laura Malt Schneiderman noted that upon reading the cover blurb for Black Milk, she inwardly groaned: “Here it comes, yet another self-absorbed round of gut-spilling about crisis and transcendency and saving one’s soul.” However, Schneiderman was happily to surprised that “this personal story has little self-absorption.” Instead, it is “really a poem, a project and a comedy.” London Independent on Sunday contributor voiced a similar assessment of this memoir, noting: “In one sense, Black Milk constitutes a lyrical, international version of the old ‘having it all’ debate, out of which emerged the 1980s Superwoman who managed home and office like a walking Filofax. But Shafak provides a subtler, more thoughtful update.” A Kirkus Reviews critic felt that Black Milk has a dual purpose. It is at once an examination of the “conflict [Shafak] feels between her many identities” and a “thoughtful, welcome addition to the works of women the author admires.” A Publishers Weekly reviewer offered further praise for Shafak’s memoir, noting that the author is “clear-eyed, savvy, [and] unrepentant” in her understanding and depiction of the “modern woman’s despair, and especially enlightening are her renderings of the lives of … women writers she admires.” Colleen Mondor commended this work in Booklist, concluding: “Beautifully rendered, Shafak’s Black Milk is an epic poem to women everywhere.”
Honor
In Honor, Shafak returns to the novel with the tale of an “honor” killing by a Kurdish family from Turkey transplanted to London in the 1970s. Iskender Toprak, part of the immigrant family, has killed his mother, Pembe, as she was believed to be carrying on an affair. Thus, for this young man such a killing was a matter of honor. Shafak goes deeper into the matter, though, looking at the family over several generations and what has led to this killing. The author also examines the culture clash between Turk and Kurd, East and West, tradition and modernity, and rural versus urban, as well as the role of women in Middle Eastern societies in this “worthy addition to a growing body of literature from authors with Middle Eastern roots,” as Library Journal contributor Christine DeZelar-Tiedman noted.
A New Yorker critic had praise for Honor, noting that “Shafak writes beautifully and maintains a high level of tension, … telling an enduring story with near-Biblical themes.” Similarly, Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman called Honor a “trenchant, dazzlingly imaginative, suspenseful, mystical, and socially astute novel,” while a Kirkus Reviews writer remarked that “Shafak turns what might seem a polemic against honor killing in lesser hands into a searing but empathetic and ultimately universal family tragedy.”
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10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World
For her novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Shafak took inspiration from the true story of the death of an Istanbul sex worker. Asked by a Booker Prize interviewer about her interest in marginalized people, Shafak related: “As a writer I am not only interested in stories and storytelling, I am also drawn to silences—and the silenced. There is a part of me that wants to understand where are the silences in my society and who are the silenced. … The art of storytelling can bring the periphery to the centre and make the invisible a bit more visible, the unheard just a bit better heard.”
As the novel opens, Tequila Leila finds her life at its close, as her persisting brain realizes that her heart has stopped beating. She has just over ten minutes of consciousness left, an interval that gives way to the recollection of her life story. World Literature Today reviewer Michelle Lancaster noted that the opening scene’s “surprising device immediately captures the reader’s attention, and curiosity commands you turn the page.” Smells and objects spark Leila’s memories of being raised by her father’s first wife, rebelling against her conservative family, suffering abuse at the hands of an uncle, and running away to a brothel in Istanbul. The eclectic company she meets there—a trans sex worker, a trafficked Somalian, a Lebanese dwarf, a floundering nightclub singer—become her essential companions, and the last third of the book traces their response to Leila’s death and unacceptable burial.
Reviewing 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World In the Times Literary Supplement, Sarah Jilani observed that Shafak “should be commended for her unflinching confrontation of a range of themes that will resonate well beyond contemporary Turkey: victim blaming, the policing of women’s behaviour, stigma surrounding disability, and violence against sex workers.” Lancaster enjoyed how Shafak “weaves intricate details” into the narrative and hailed the group of protagonists as “rich and diverse, each sharing a common characteristic: the homesickness and vulnerability of those who don’t fit into the increasingly narrow confines of the socially acceptable.” Lancaster added that “the many disparate cultures of Turkey suffuse this tale, illuminating the charms and conflicts.”
The Island of Missing Trees
Shafak’s next novel was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. The Island of Missing Trees revolves around political turmoil on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, a site of hostility between nearby Greece and Turkey and semipermanent division in 1974. The narrative alternates between that year and the 2010s, with the family of teenage Ada—whose names means “island” in Turkish, whose mother is a Turkish Cypriot archaeologist, and whose father is a Greek Cypriot ecologist—tragically caught in the turmoil. The narrative includes scenes that take the perspective of a fig tree, rooting the engagement with the natural world in the very soil of the island.
In World Literature Today, Zeynep Z. Atayurt-Fenge hailed The Island of Missing Trees as “subtly knitted,” “multilayered and polyphonic.” The reviewer remarked that “Shafak’s incisive storytelling … depicts in-depth the invisible aspects and nuances of the nonhuman world, the world of trees in particular, and in doing so offers a stimulating perspective that raises awareness and sensitivity to the arboreal world.” Atayurt-Fenge concluded that Shafak deftly “accentuates the wonders of the ecosystem within a complex narrative of twists and turns, hope and despair, missing and finding, burying and unburying, folding and unfolding, which is held together by the unifying power of love and empathy.”
There Are Rivers in the Sky
A widely wandering drop of water, persisting over the centuries, frames the narrative in There Are Rivers in the Sky, which follows three main characters. Alongside the River Thames in the mid-nineteenth century, Arthur Smyth is born in a London slum with a prodigious memory that allows him to decode cuneiform tablets and become a famed Assyriologist. On the shore of the Tigris River in 2014, Narin, a Yazidi girl is cared for by a grandmother anxious over the dam that will displace them, setting up an ill-advised baptismal journey to Iraq under ISIS. In 2018, Dr. Zaleekhah Clarke, hydrologist, lays down the scientific foundation for the narrative’s plumbing the idea of water as life-giving resource and its importance to human civilization. The three story lines—one Dickensian, one interrogative, one scholarly—weave together as Narin’s fate hangs in the balance.
Guardian reviewer Michael Donkor affirmed that “the spotlight on Yazidi culture, and the brutal persecution of this community, … is the novel’s most unequivocal achievement.” In the Observer, Alex Clark hailed the novel as “always absorbing and often painfully affecting.” Clark was impressed with the “delicacy of Shafak’s observations about human dynamics” and “the furtiveness of her characters’ most deeply held emotions and desires.” New York Times reviewer Stephen Markley characterized There Are Rivers in the Sky as “engaging and melancholy.” The philosophizing about the lost rivers underneath London inspired him to remark that “some of the novel’s best passages explores this curiosity about the materiality of water and what our species has done with it.” Markley declared that the nineteenth-century scenes “ soar with vivid, Dickensian detail …, summoning the pleasure of falling away into another time and place,” while elsewhere the “language often takes on the cadence of a fable, a poetic rhythm that can vary between beauty and a tendency to hold the reader’s hand.” At its best, Markley affirmed, by virtue of Shafak’s “ gorgeous writing” the novel “explodes into a roaring journey through ecology and memory.”[close new]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, September 15, 2004, Michael Spinella, review of The Saint of Incipient Insanities, p. 209; November 1, 2006, Donna Seaman, review of The Bastard of Istanbul, p. 6; February 15, 2010, Donna Seaman, review of The Forty Rules of Love, p. 34; May 1, 2011, review of Black Milk: On Writing, Motherhood, and the Harem Within, p. 61; March 1, 2013, Donna Seaman, review of Honor, p. 18; August 16, 2013, Philip Maughan, author interview, p. 42.
Chronicle of Higher Education, July 28, 2006, Aisha Labi, “Professor Faces Trial in Turkey.”
Curve, December, 2004, Diane Anderson-Minshall, review of The Saint of Incipient Insanities, p. 52.
Economist, August 14, 2004, review of The Saint of Incipient Insanities, p. 75; January 13, 2007, “Who to Believe? New Fiction 2,” review of The Bastard of Istanbul, p. 77.
Entertainment Weekly, February 2, 2007, Missy Schwartz, review of The Bastard of Istanbul, p. 129.
Guardian (London, England), July 24, 2006, Richard Lea, “In Istanbul, a Writer Awaits Her Day in Court”; June 19, 2010, Rebecca Abrams, review of The Forty Rules of Love; August 3, 2024, “Elif Shafak: ‘As a Writer in Turkey, You Can Be Attacked, Put on Trial, Imprisoned'”; August 7, 2024, Michael Donkor, review of There Are Rivers in the Sky.
Independent (London, England), July 27, 2007, Boyd Tonkin, author interview; July 9, 2010, Alev Adil, review of The Forty Rules of Love.
Independent on Sunday, (London, England), August 29, 2013, Alison Roberts,“My Recipe for Marriage: A Husband Who Lives 1,500 Miles Away,” p. 30.
Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2004, review of The Saint of Incipient Insanities, p. 773; July 15, 2006, review of The Gaze, p. 697; November 1, 2006, review of The Bastard of Istanbul, p. 1099; January 1, 2010, review of The Forty Rules of Love; March 1, 2011, review of Black Milk; February 1, 2013, review of Honor.
Library Journal, October 15, 2004, Edward B. St. John, review of The Saint of Incipient Insanities, p. 56; November 1, 2006, Eleanor J. Bader, review of The Bastard of Istanbul, p. 70; January 1, 2010, Susanne Wells, review of The Forty Rules of Love, p. 93; April 15, 2013, Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, review of Honor, p. 76.
Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, spring, 2004, “Migrations: A Meridians Interview with Elif Shafak,” p. 55.
Middle East Journal, autumn, 2004, review of The Saint of Incipient Insanities, p. 706; winter, 2005, Sara Hahn, review of The Saint of Incipient Insanities, p. 170.
New Statesman, August 16, 2013, Philip Maughan, author interview, p. 42.
New Yorker, April 22, 2013, review of Honor, p. 106.
New York Times, February 10, 2007, Julie Bosman, “Novelist Endangered by Her Book,” profile of Elif Shafak, p. 7.
New York Times Book Review, January 21, 2007, Lorraine Adams, “Armenian in Istanbul,” review of The Bastard of Istanbul, p. 7.
Observer (London, England), August 5, 2024, Alex Clark, review of There Are Rivers in the Sky.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh, PA), May 29, 2011, review of Black Milk.
Publishers Weekly, September 13, 2004, review of The Saint of Incipient Insanities, p. 56; June 19, 2006, review of The Gaze, p. 35; November 13, 2006, review of The Bastard of Istanbul, p. 34; December 4, 2006, Louisa Ermelino, “East Meets West,” profile of Elif Shafak, p. 28; November 30, 2009, review of The Forty Rules of Love, p. 26; March 14, 2011, review of Black Milk, p. 63.
Times Literary Supplement, August 23, 2019, Sarah Jilani, review of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, p. 41.
World Literature Today, March 1, 2007, “Orange Peels,” review of The Bastard of Istanbul, p. 49; September-October, 2013, review of Honor; March-April, 2015, Lori Feathers, review of The Architect’s Apprentice, p. 62; winter, 2020, Michelle Lancaster, review of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, p. 76; January-February, 2023, Zeynep Z. Atayurt-Fenge, review of The Island of Missing Trees, p. 76.
ONLINE
BBC website, http://www.bbc.co.uk/ (September 21, 2006), “Top Novelist Acquitted in Turkey,” profile of Elif Shafak.
Booker Prizes website, https://thebookerprizes.com/ (September 10, 2024), “An Interview with Elif Shafak: ‘I Am Drawn to the Silenced.'”
Bookslut, http://www.bookslut.com/ (December 1, 2012), Jenny McPhee, review of Honor.
Cleveland.com, http://www.cleveland.com/ (March 27, 2013), Kristin Ohlson, review of Honor.
Elif Shafak website, https://www.elifsafak.com.tr (September 10, 2024).
Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/ (December 30, 2013), “Elif Shafak.”
Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/ (April 13, 2013), Joy Lo Dico, “Elif Shafak: ‘Fear Is a Very Dangerous Thing.’”
Istanbul Review, http://www.theistanbulreview.com/ (December 30, 2013), “Elif Shafak.”
Marion Boyars Publishers website, http://www.marionboyars.co.uk/ (September 14, 2005).
Marly Rusoff & Associates website, http://www.rusoffagency.com/ (December 30, 2013), biography of Elif Shafak; (May 23, 2011), author profile.
Middle East Eye, https://www.middleeasteye.net/ (January 26, 2024), Ragip Soylu, “Turkey: Elif Shafak Ordered to Pay Damages over Plagiarism.”
National Public Radio website, http://www.npr.org/ (March 17, 2010), Alan Cheuse, review of The Forty Rules of Love.
New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/ (August 18, 2024), Stephen Markley, review of There Are Rivers in the Sky.
Observer, https://www.theguardian.com/ (July 18, 2021), Rachel Cooke, “Novelist Elif Shafak: ‘I’ve Always Believed in Inherited Pain.’”
PEN American Center website, http://www.pen.org/ (June 24, 2007), biography of Elif Shafak.
Penguin Speakers Bureau website, http://www.penguinspeakersbureau.com/ (December 30, 2013), “Elif Shafak.”
Penguin website, http://www.penguin.co.uk/ (December 30, 2013, “Elif Shafak.”
Sydney Morning Herald, http://www.smh.com.au/ (March 17, 2010), Caroline Baum, author interview.
Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ (April 26, 2012), Lucy Beresford, review of Honor; (July 24, 2024), Katherine Waters, review of There Are Rivers in the Sky.
Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist. She has published 19 books, 12 of which are novels, including her latest The Island of Missing Trees, shortlisted for the Costa Award, British Book Awards, RSL Ondaatje Prize and Women’s Prize for Fiction. She is a bestselling author in many countries around the world and her work has been translated into 57 languages. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize; and was Blackwell’s Book of the Year. The Forty Rules of Love was chosen by BBC among the 100 Novels that Shaped Our World. The Architect’s Apprentice was chosen for The Queens Reading Room. Shafak holds a PhD in political science and she has taught at various universities in Turkey, the US and the UK, including St Anne's College, Oxford University, where she is an honorary fellow. She also holds a honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Bard College.
Shafak is a Fellow and a Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature and has been chosen among BBC’s 100 most inspiring and influential women. She is a founding member of ECFR (European Council on Foreign Relations). An advocate for women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights and freedom of expression, Shafak is an inspiring public speaker and twice TED Global speaker. Shafak contributes to major publications around the world and she was awarded the medal of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2017 she was chosen by Politico as one of the twelve people “who will give you a much-needed lift of the heart”. She has judged numerous literary prizes, including PEN Nabokov prize and she has chaired the Wellcome Prize. Recently, Shafak was awarded the Halldór Laxness International Literature Prize for her contribution to 'the renewal of the art of storytelling’. www.elifshafak.com
Elif Shafak
Turkey (b.1971)
Elif Şafak is a Turkish author, columnist and speaker. She has been called Turkey's most popular female novelist.Şafak has published 15 books, 10 of which are novels. She writes fiction in both Turkish and English.
Genres: Literary Fiction
New and upcoming books
June 2024
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Democracy
August 2024
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There are Rivers in the Sky
Novels
The Flea Palace (2004)
The Saint of Incipient Insanities (2004)
The Gaze (2006)
The Bastard of Istanbul (2007)
The Forty Rules of Love (2010)
Honour (2012)
The Architect's Apprentice (2014)
Three Daughters of Eve (2016)
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (2019)
The Island of Missing Trees (2021)
There are Rivers in the Sky (2024)
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Non fiction hide
Black Milk (2011)
The Happiness of Blond People (2011)
How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division (2020)
Democracy (2024) (with others)
Turkey: Elif Shafak ordered to pay damages over plagiarism
The writer was accused of plagiarising sections from a 1990 book and using them in her best-selling novel 'The Flea Palace'
Turkish writer Elif Shafak, author of "Black Milk" poses during the 5th edition of the Women's Forum at the Deauville International Center on October 16, 2009. (Mychele Daniau / AFP)
Turkish writer Elif Shafak at the 5th edition of the Women's Forum at the Deauville International Center on 16 October 2009 (Mychele Daniau/AFP)
By Ragip Soylu in Izmir, Turkey
Published date: 26 January 2024 10:52 GMT | Last update: 7 months 4 days ago
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A Turkish court has ordered award-winning novelist Elif Shafak to pay damages to another writer after being accused of copying from her book, according to a judgement publicised this week.
The Istanbul court said last month that the expert report prepared for the case indicates that at least five percent of Shafak’s 2002 novel The Flea Palace had been plagiarised from The Flies Palace, a 1990 work by Turkish columnist and writer Mine Kirikkanat. This included copying some of the ideas, characters, and settings.
The court added that Shafak must pay around 160,000 Turkish lira ($5,200) compensation to Kirikkanat and run an advertisement acknowledging the plagiarism in one of the country's biggest newspapers.
Shafak has said she will appeal.
In a formal statement on Wednesday, Shafak said that the allegations were “insane smears” and the court case wasn’t built on “the rule of law”, adding that she would also sue Kirikkanat for damaging her reputation.
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“There is no bad word or insult left in the dictionary she hasn’t said about me,” Shafak said. “Not once have I responded to evil with evil.”
Shafak added that she suspects Kirikkanat acted in bad faith or out of terrible jealousy.
Shafak is known for her liberal, democratic, political opinions, while Kirikkanat is part of what the Turkish public calls the “old guard”, a Kemalist with strong opinions on the state and the republic.
Shafak’s lawyer argued in court that The Flea Palace is 281 pages, while The Flies Palace is 142 pages, and so the plaintiff's claims that there is plagiarism in all four chapters of the book isn’t possible considering the length of the two texts.
Expert advice 'disregarded'
The lawyer also added that several expert reports commissioned by those representing Shafak prove that there isn’t even inspiration, let alone plagiarism, in The Flea Palace.
Shafak also said the court has disregarded the opinions of several respected novelists who said there was no plagiarism at all.
Shafak is one of Turkey's best-selling novelists and one of the most well-known Turkish literary figures around the world. Yet her name is frequently associated with controversy in Turkey.
The publication of her 2007 book The Bastard of Istanbul triggered a bizarre court case against her in which she was accused of “insulting Turkishness” because one of the characters in the book acknowledges the Armenian genocide.
Turkey refutes the term and says the mass killings at the beginning of the 20th century - where a million Armenians are estimated to have died - were part of a wider conflict. The charges were later dropped.
In a 2017 TED Talk she declared that she was bisexual, which created a buzz in Turkish media.
In 2019 a Turkish prosecutor launched an investigation against her - and other novelists - for describing child abuse and sexual violence in two novels, The Gaze (1999) and Three Daughters of Eve (2016).
Turkey: Corpses missing body parts that washed ashore coast likely Syrian
Read More »
During the recent plagiarism judgement, the Istanbul court noted that both The Flea Palace and The Flies Palace had similar names, both explored a story based around an apartment block with five floors and in both an architect emerges as one of the leading characters.
“Both books tackled the protection of the minorities, religious and mystic beliefs, and Kurds,” the court said. “Both apartments in the books had similar architecture, with bird motifs, a doormen family with the same number of individuals, and children with similar body defects.”
The court added that both books included trans and homosexual characters, and had women who didn't live at the apartment but were introduced by the male residents, who ridiculed them.
However, many experts and novelists have disagreed with the court, including Ulker Gokbertk, a retired literature professor.
“Both books are unique and valuable novels that tell their narratives in the Beyoglu environment within completely different fiction narrative techniques and completely different semantic and semiotic frameworks,” she said. “There is absolutely no similarity or plagiarism between them.”
An interview with Elif Shafak: 'I am drawn to the silenced'
The author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, our Monthly Spotlight title for July, talks about the authors who have inspired her, making the invisible visible, and her ‘slightly insane’ writing routine
Publication date and time:Published July 5, 2024
Tell us about a book that you loved as a child. What was it about it that captured your imagination, and has it stayed with you?
A Tale of Two Cities. It was the summer that my maternal grandmother took me to Izmir and left me at my paternal grandmother’s house so that I could see my father for the first time in years. A strange, sad, lonely summer. I remember vividly the book had just been published in Turkish as a graphic novel. It was the first book by Charles Dickens that I read. It blew my mind. That whole summer, I read it multiple times, coloured in all the pictures – the bonnets, the houses, the cask of wine, the guillotine. Dickens became my friend.
Tell us about a book that made you want to become a writer. How did it inspire you to embark on your own creative journey, and how did it influence your writing style or aspirations as an author?
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. It shook, inspired and completely changed me. I was a teenager when I read for the first time in Madrid. I had grown up with oral tales of the Middle East, the Balkans, Asia Minor… Stories flowing in concentric circles. What I found in Don Quixote, for the first time, was the ingenious and inclusive canvas of the novel as a form. An inventive structure of multiple layers and emotions, from humour to sorrow. A way of storytelling that weaved imagination, courage, knowledge and intuition. A book about the love of books! A book about reading and daring. I have reread Don Quixote at different stages of my life and each time it is a different experience. It changed me as a writer, but primarily, it changed me as a reader.
What would you consider your all-time favourite work of fiction? How has it left a lasting impression on you and have you revisited it recently?
I think I need to mention two novels simultaneously. One is Orlando by Virginia Woolf. It has a very special place in my heart. Until I read Orlando for the first time, I did not know you could take this much risk as a writer, daring to imagine a story that transcends all conventional borders – time, geography, culture, identity, memory. The whole book is water-like – shifting, searching, flowing. It is a novel that I associate with a strong sense of freedom. The other novel that shaped me profoundly was Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. It is both passionate and philosophical. Emotional and intellectual. It is a book that connects the mind and the heart, exploring really difficult themes, then and now, such as faith, doubt, morality, free will, history, family, individual identity versus collective identity… I love the fact that both his characters and literary structures are multi-faceted and interconnected, refusing to be reduced to a single, simple thread.
Portrait of Virginia Woolf.
Portrait of Virginia Woolf © George C Beresford / Getty Images
At the heart of literature there is a desire to debunk dualities, transcend numbness and apathy, cultivate understanding and empathy, and build connections that honour complexity and nuance
Your novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2019, was inspired by the real-life death of a sex worker in Istanbul. What was it about this story that compelled you to write a novel, and why do you often choose to write about individuals on the fringes of society?
As a writer I am not only interested in stories and storytelling, I am also drawn to silences – and the silenced. There is a part of me that wants to understand where are the silences in my society and who are the silenced. There is a cemetery I used to visit in Istanbul, it is known as The Cemetery of the Companionless. It has grown so fast over the years. It is massive. This is where people who have been ‘othered’ by the society are buried without a proper funeral –prostitutes, people who have died of HIV-related diseases, suicides, migrants who have lost their lives as they were trying to reach Europe… They are all buried there, side by side. There are no names or surnames on their tombstones, only numbers. It is a place where human beings are turned into numbers, and stories into silences. In my novel I wanted to flip this over. Just turn it upside down. I wanted to pick one of those numbers on the graves and give it a name, a story, friends or companions, reversing the process of dehumanisation.
10 Minutes… touches on various social issues, including human rights, gender, sexuality and marginalisation. What do you believe is fiction’s role in addressing such topics?
The art of storytelling can bring the periphery to the centre and make the invisible a bit more visible, the unheard just a bit better heard. I come from a country that is to a large extent shaped by collective amnesia. Turkey has a long and rich history but that does not translate into strong memory. Just the opposite, history, the way it is taught and canonised, is almost always his-story. Never her-story. And not the stories of men from poorer backgrounds or minority cultures and so on, but the stories of men in positions of power and authority. The moment you ask, who is telling this narrative, and who was not allowed to tell it, everything shifts. As a novelist I am interested in untold stories – the stories of women, the stories of minorities, the stories that have been conveniently erased, forgotten. These are not easy subjects to explore and when you do that you get a lot of attacks, but the novel, as a literary form of nuance, pluralism, complexity and empathy, is home in exile, a most needed sanctuary.
Location plays a large role in 10 Minutes…, with Istanbul providing the backdrop, along with its vivid sights, sounds and smells. How important is it for you to imbue your work with such a strong sense of place?
Place is very important to me. As an immigrant author I think a lot about questions of belonging and non-belonging. What does it mean to be uprooted or deracinated, rootless, re-rooted…. Can we have multiple homes, multiple belongings in a world that tries to narrow us down to a single box. All these questions matter to me. Life has also taught me that just because you are physically far away from your motherland it does not mean you are disconnected from it emotionally. We carry our motherlands with us wherever we go. There is a certain melancholy to that, a feeling of loss. At the same time the UK has become my home. And the English language too. I write fiction in a language other than my native tongue. So it is very complicated, my relationship with place and belonging and roots.
Critics and readers have observed that elements of magical realism appear in several of your works. What draws you to that style of fiction, and which other writers and works of magical realism have influenced you?
I have a lot of respect for authors who have been associated with ‘magical realism’, such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison or Jorge Luis Borges. They have each left a profound impact on me. On the other hand, I sincerely think we should question this literary denomination, especially in a world that is profoundly interconnected. In the culture where I come from, or at least, in the house of my Grandma, the woman who raised me until I was ten years old, there were elements of spirituality and magic woven into every moment of daily life and political reality. My point is, these were not separate categories. For instance, when you live in a city like Istanbul for so long, you start to see how everything is constantly mixed with everything else. Sorrow with humour, actuality with surreal, in general, the absurd with the political… So, my understanding is that life itself does not keep ‘magic’ and ‘realism’ in two separate categories, but constantly and surprisingly blends them anyway. Maybe we need another term, a new concept altogether and literary critics can help us with. As an author, all I know is, I would like my fiction to bridge oral culture and written culture, the East and the West, the spiritual and the material, the surreal and the political, humour and melancholy, joining seemingly different entities of identity, time and place, showing how, in truth, everything and everyone is connected.
Skyline of Istanbul.
Skyline of Istanbul © Getty Images
I love the art of storytelling. I love the novel as a form. It is the only place where I can be plural, where I am completely myself and where I feel free
How long did it take to write 10 Minutes…, and what does your writing process look like? Do you write multiple drafts or finesse as you go? Do you have a strict writing routine or do you write as and when inspiration strikes? Is there a lot of meticulous plotting before you begin writing or do you let things emerge naturally?
I never know exactly how long it takes me to finish a novel because I don’t exactly know when they start. I can always tell you when I finished, but at what stage did I start writing it inside my mind? I had been interested in The Cemetery of the Companionless for a long time, collecting local newspaper cuttings to try to understand the people buried in his sad graveyard. I had also been reading about studies of neuroscience, how the human brain can keep working for another few minutes even after the heart has stopped beating. This gave me the structure of the novel. It is an unusual structure in the sense that it begins with an end. Right away we know the main character is dead, dumped in a garbage bin, on the outskirts of Istanbul. But her mind is still functioning, for 10 Minutes, 38 Seconds. What do the dead remember in that limited amount of time? The good? The bad? These were the questions that motivated and guided me. My writing routine is slightly insane. I fill in dozens of notebooks, do a crazy amount of research, my feelings go up and down as I tumble into valleys of doubt and anxiety, climb mountains of depression, but underneath everything there is pure love. I love the art of storytelling. I love the novel as a form. It is the only place where I can be plural, where I am completely myself and where I feel free.
At the Booker Prize ceremony in 2022, you spoke powerfully, in reference to the attack on Salman Rushdie in New York earlier that year, about how ‘the literary imagination is one of our last remaining democratic spaces’. What more can readers and writers – and others – do to protect those spaces and ensure that freedom of speech survives?
Literature is a gentle antidote to our badly divided and broken world. For fiction writers there is no such thing as ‘us versus them’. There is no ‘Other’. Through the eyes of a novelist or a poet, actually, the Other is my brother, my sister, I am the Other. At the heart of literature there is a desire to debunk dualities, transcend numbness and apathy, cultivate understanding and empathy, and build connections that honour complexity and nuances. In a world shaped by short attention span, fast consumption and hyper materialism, the long form of the novel helps us to slow down and pay attention to knowledge rather than snippets of information and misinformation. It is not a coincidence that all around the world, wherever and whenever democracy is attacked, writers and poets have been among the first to be censored, prosecuted, exiled or imprisoned. As we are speaking libraries are under enormous pressure in the US with book bans and book removals rising at an alarming rate. In the past, many experts assumed that one should worry about human rights, women’s rights and freedom of speech in those ‘liquid lands’ but not so much in the ‘solid lands’ of the West, where democracy had been achieved. But the truth is there is no such thing as ‘liquid lands versus solid lands’. In the words of the Polish philosopher Zygmunt Bauman we are all living through ‘liquid times’. We need to cultivate global solidarity and global sisterhood. We need to protect literary spaces, support libraries and literary festivals and put more pressure on people in positions of power and authority to definitely invest in culture and the arts.
Lastly, is there a hidden gem from the Booker Library – a lesser-known, underappreciated title from among the 600+ books that have been nominated for the Booker and International Booker Prizes over the past half-century – that you would recommend to others, and if so why?
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively. It is a remarkable literary achievement, but sadly it has been patronised by some reviewers and I honestly think if it had been written by a man, it would have been reviewed very differently and much more positively. It is a novel that has stayed with me. I recently had the privilege of writing an introduction to the new edition of Moon Tiger and so I read it again after many years, admiring not only the depth of the storytelling and its characters but also the exquisite craftsmanship behind the novel.
The Observer
Elif Shafak
This article is more than 3 years old
Interview
Novelist Elif Shafak: ‘I’ve always believed in inherited pain’
This article is more than 3 years old
Rachel Cooke
The award-winning Turkish-British writer, whose new book explores love and politics in Cyprus and London, talks about generational trauma, food in exile and how heavy metal helps her write
Rachel Cooke
Sun 18 Jul 2021 04.00 EDT
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If trees could talk, what might they tell us? “Well,” says the Turkish-British writer Elif Shafak, smiling at me over a cup of mint tea, her long hair a little damp from the rain. “They live a lot longer than us. So they see a lot more than we do. Perhaps they can help us to have a calmer, wiser angle on things.” In unison, we turn our heads towards the window. We’re both slightly anxious, I think, Shafak because she arrived for our meeting a tiny bit late, and me because this cafe in Holland Park is so noisy and crowded (we can’t sit outside because yet another violent summer squall has just blown in). A sycamore or horse chestnut-induced sense of perspective could be just what the pair of us need.
Shafak, who is sometimes described as Turkey’s most famous female writer, has a reputation for outspokenness. A fierce advocate for equality and freedom of speech, her views have brought her into conflict with the increasingly repressive government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In person, however, you get no immediate sense of this. Gentle and warm, her voice is never emphatic; she smiles with her (green) eyes as well as her mouth. And while her new novel, The Island of Missing Trees – her first since the Booker-shortlisted 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World – is certainly political, its themes to do with violence and loss, it’s also a passionate love story, one of whose most important characters just happens to be – yes – a gentle and sagacious tree.
Grown from a cutting that was smuggled from Cyprus to London by its owner, Kostas, after he and his forbidden love, Defne, left the island in search of a new beginning, it has seen it all, this little fig. It grew originally in the taverna where Kostas, a Greek Cypriot, and Defne, a Turkish Cypriot, used to meet as teenagers – a restaurant that was reduced to rubble when it was bombed in 1974 – and thanks to this, it knows everything that they’ve been through: the pain of separation, the melancholy of exile. But it also represents a physical link between past and present for their teenage daughter, Ada, who was born in London, and who, when the book begins, understands nothing of her parents’ secrets and shared trauma.
Religions clash, but superstitions travel well across borders. And it’s the same with food
“I’ve always believed in inherited pain,” says Shafak. “It’s not scientific, perhaps, but things we cannot talk about easily within families do pass from one generation to the next, unspoken. In immigrant families, the older generation often wants to protect the younger from past sorrow, so they choose not to say much, and the second generation is too busy adapting, being part of the host country, to investigate. So it’s left to the third generation to dig into memory. I’ve met many third-generation immigrants who have older memories even than their parents. Their mothers and fathers tell them: ‘This is your home, forget about all that.’ But for them, identity matters.”
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Can a person be homesick for a place they’ve never been, or knew only briefly? She believes that they can: “You carry a place in your soul, even through the stories you were not told. You can sense the void. The past matters, because it shapes us, whether we know it or not.” This kind of longing, she believes, is often triggered by food, which is one reason why her novel is full of enticing descriptions of Cypriot dishes (as you read, you may find yourself longing for a slice of sticky baclava, the “correct” recipe for which is almost as hotly contested as that of hummus). “Religions clash, but superstitions travel well across borders,” she says. “And it’s the same with food.” In the kitchen, the lives of a Greek family and a Turkish one may be very similar.
Ada’s aunt, Meryem, visiting her in London, turns every meal into a banquet, even breakfast: this is her way of controlling the world. “I was raised by women like her,” says Shafak. “For my grandmother, food was more than food. It was about bringing people together. You can solve problems around the table. You can achieve peace. Yes, there are things Meryem doesn’t know how to talk about. In some ways, she is outmoded. But she associates food with love, and to me that’s very real.”
Shafak and her mother in Ankara, Turkey.
Shafak and her mother in Ankara, Turkey. Photograph: Courtesy of Elif Shafak
She had long wanted to write about Cyprus and its troubles. “In Europe, we still have a divided capital [Nicosia, where a militarised border has since 1974 separated the Republic of Cyprus and Northern Cyprus, the latter a country recognised only by Turkey]. It’s so near geographically, and it’s part of the history of this country, too [Britain was the colonial power in Cyprus]. Yet we know so little about it, even though so many people travel there.” The question was: how to approach such contentious territory? “I just didn’t dare. It’s a wound that is still open… until, that is, I found the tree. Only then did I feel comfortable enough. She – my tree is very female – gave me a chance to look beyond tribalisms, nationalisms and other clashing certainties. She also gave me the chance to think about roots, both in a metaphorical sense, and a literal one.”
Her botanical reading, as her bibliography reveals, was extensive (Richard Mabey, Merlin Sheldrake, an academic article about the notion of “optimism” and “pessimism” in plants). In the novel, Kostas at one point buries his fig, the better to protect it from the British winter. “I’d heard that they could be buried,” says Shafak. “When I lived in Ann Arbor in Michigan, where it can be quite cold, I heard of Italian and Portuguese families doing this. I found out that it really works. You hide it safely beneath the ground for two months, and then, when the spring comes, you unbury it, and it’s a kind of miracle, because it’s alive.” Later, this unburying is mirrored by other, grimmer exhumations: those carried out by the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus, a bicommunal organisation that continues to try to find and identify the bodies of the civil war’s disappeared.
Is she hopeful for the future of Cyprus? For all the pain in her book, Kostas’s enduring fig tree suggests that she might be. “I want to feel optimistic,” she says, softly. “The Committee on Missing Persons is so valuable. Many of those involved with it are women, and these young volunteers give me hope. But, of course, politicians are a different matter. That’s more complicated.” Right on cue, the two small children at the table next to us begin screaming like banshees.
Shafak spent the lockdown in London. Was it helpful to be able to visit Cyprus in her imagination? She shakes her head. “At the beginning of the pandemic, I read some tweets in which publishers said: this [isolation] isn’t very different for authors; they already work from home, they’re solitary anyway.” That wasn’t my experience at all. A writer isn’t immune to what’s happening in the world. People are dying. Even if you sit down at your desk, you start questioning yourself. Is this really what I should be doing? Does the perfect simile really matter? It’s existential. I was struggling with a lot of anxiety and uncertainty, and I want to honour those negative emotions. I don’t like pretending that I don’t have them.”
But still, she is no stranger to separation. She moved to London with her husband, a journalist, and two children more than a decade ago, after her novel The Bastard of Istanbul sparked a chain of events that led to a trial for “insulting Turkishness” (she was eventually acquitted, though other books of hers have since been examined by Turkish prosecutors on the grounds of “crimes of obscenity”). It’s now six years since she has felt able to visit Turkey. “I think about such things as belonging and home a lot,” she says. “But when you’re physically away from a place, it doesn’t mean you’re mentally disconnected. Sometimes, in your soul, you become even more attached emotionally. There is melancholy in being an exile – though I say this cautiously, because I’m also aware of the fact that the UK is my home, and I have a strong sense of belonging here, too.” She sighs. “This is what some politicians don’t understand, especially with this Brexit saga. You can have multiple attachments.”
A protestor in front of a poster of Shafak during a demonstration outside the court during September’s 2006 trial.
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A protester in front of a poster of Shafak during a demonstration outside the court during September’s 2006 trial. Photograph: Mustafa Ozer/AFP/Getty Images
Was London the obvious place to come? “Yes, it really was. I love this country. It’s so diverse, and I don’t take that for granted, because I come from a country that has never appreciated diversity. But I’ve also seen it change. Imagine it. I became a British citizen, and a few months later, Britain left the EU. I used to think British people were so calm when they talked about politics, but that calmness has gone. Brexit broke a strained system. There are many things that worry me, and one is that the language of politics is full of martial metaphors now. This talk of judges being the enemy of the people. It makes me freeze. These are dangerous signs. I’ve met some arrogant politicians. ‘Surely you’re not comparing the UK to Turkey,’ they say. No, I’m not saying that. But what has happened elsewhere can always happen here.”
When she thinks about Turkey’s young people, she senses the possibility of change. But when she looks at President Erdoğan and his regime, she sees only a country going backwards. “When he came to power, he and his party were posing as liberal reformists. They were pro-EU. They talked about recognising the pain of the Armenians and of reconciliation with the Kurds. Then, at first gradually, and later with bewildering speed, they became more authoritarian. We have elections, but that doesn’t mean Turkey is a democracy. If you have the rule of law and a separation of powers, a diverse media and independent academia, then you have a democracy. But if those components are broken, then you don’t. It’s an ecosystem.” Erdoğan has now been in power for 18 years. An entire generation has never known any other leader.
Writer Elif Shafak (Booker Prize Long List) seen at the Edinburgh International Book Festival , Scotland UK 23/08/2019
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Elif Shafak on Turkey's treatment of novelists – books podcast
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Shafak was born in Strasbourg, in 1971; her father was studying for a PhD in philosophy in the city. But when her parents separated, she returned to Ankara with her mother, where she was brought up between the ages of five and 10 largely by her grandmother. “Divorce was unusual at the time,” she tells me. “But what was more unusual was that my grandmother, who was not educated herself, intervened so that my mother could return to university and have a career [she was later a diplomat]. Usually, young women divorcees were immediately married off to someone older because they were seen as in danger and needing someone to protect them.” Shafak had come from a world inhabited by leftist students, smoking their Gauloises in black polo necks; even to a little girl, the conservative atmosphere in Ankara was a shock. Was her grandmother religious? “She wasn’t strict. My two grandmothers were the same age and class and sect, but their interpretation of religion was very different. My paternal grandmother’s was based on fear and shame, on haram and the unblinking celestial gaze, while my maternal grandmother’s was based on love.”
Her mother never remarried, but her father and his new French wife went on to have two sons, whom Shafak did not meet until she was in her 20s. “He was very disconnected from me. I didn’t see him much. I have no photos of us together. There was an issue of anger … it took me a while to cope with that. Maybe what I found hardest was that he had been a bad, negligent person towards me, but a good father to his sons, and a good professor to his students. That was difficult, coming to terms with the idea that someone can be very good in parts of their life, and a failure in others. For a long time, I felt like the other child: the forgotten one.”
Shafak’s grandmother and great grandmother.
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Shafak’s grandmother and great grandmother. Photograph: Courtesy of Elif Shafak
Was it this – the need to be seen – that drove her to be a writer? By any standards, she has had a remarkable career: the recipient of numerous awards, her bestselling books translated into dozens of languages, her Ted talks watched by millions. (She doesn’t disguise her ambition, telling me that she struggles to believe writers who insist they don’t care about awards.) “No, I started writing fiction when I was very young, not because I wanted to be an author, but because I thought life was really boring. I needed books in order to stay sane. To me, story land was much more colourful and enticing than the real world. The desire to be a writer only came in my 20s.”
What about her decision to use a different language? (The Saint of Incipient Insanities, which came out in 2004, was the first novel she wrote in English.) “I was constantly writing little pieces in English, but I kept them to myself. I had my voice in Turkish. But then there came a moment – I’d moved to America to be a professor – when I just took the plunge. It gave me such a sense of freedom. I still find it easier to express melancholy and longing in Turkish, but humour is definitely easier in English. We don’t have a word for irony in Turkish.”
It has stopped raining now, and the cafe is closing, so we go out into the fresh air. We’re heading in different directions, but she’s determined to walk me to the park gate. I notice what a good listener she is, her body angled towards mine confidingly. She is a very serious person. It’s not only that she regards it as her political duty to talk of such things as equality and diversity; she seems to relish doing so. But there’s a larky, student-ish side to her, too. Is it true that she loves heavy metal, I ask. Her gentleness seems a bit at odds with headbanging. “Oh, yes,” she says. “I’ve always loved it.” She lists several bands, none of which I’ve heard of. “I like all the sub-genres: industrial, viking…” While she’s working, she listens to the same song over and over, using headphones so her children don’t complain. Crikey. Can she concentrate? “Yes! That’s when I write best. I don’t like silence. It makes me nervous.” Somewhere in the distance, I hear the obliging roar of a motorbike.
The Island of Missing Trees is published by Penguin (£14.99) on 5 August. To support the Guardian and the Observer preorder your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
Elif Shafak
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Elif Shafak
Shafak in 2021
Shafak in 2021
Native name
Elif Şafak
Born Elif Bilgin
25 October 1971 (age 52)
Strasbourg, France
Occupation
Novelistessayistpublic speakeractivist
Language
EnglishTurkishSpanish
Education Middle East Technical University
Period 1990s–present
Genre Literary fiction
Notable works
Three Daughters of EveThe GazeThe Bastard of IstanbulThe Forty Rules of LoveHonour10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World
Signature
Website
www.elifshafak.com
Elif Shafak FRSL (Turkish: Elif Şafak, pronounced [eˈlif ʃaˈfak]; née Bilgin; born 25 October 1971) is a Turkish-British[1] novelist, essayist, public speaker, political scientist[2] and activist.
Shafak[a] writes in Turkish and English, and has published 21 books. She is best known for her novels, which include The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love, Three Daughters of Eve and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World. Her works have been translated into 57 languages and have been nominated for several literary awards. She has been described by the Financial Times as "Turkey's leading female novelist",[3] with several of her works having been bestsellers in Turkey and internationally.
Her works have prominently featured the city of Istanbul, and dealt with themes of Eastern and Western culture, roles of women in society, and human rights issues. Certain politically challenging topics addressed in her novels, such as child abuse and the Armenian genocide, have led to legal action from authorities in Turkey[4][5] that prompted her to emigrate to the United Kingdom.
Shafak has a PhD in political science. An essayist and contributor to several media outlets, Shafak has advocated for women's rights, minority rights, and freedom of speech.[6][7]
Early life and education
Shafak was born in Strasbourg, France, to Nuri Bilgin, a philosopher, and Şafak Atayman, who later became a diplomat. After her parents separated, Shafak returned to Ankara, Turkey, where she was raised by her mother and maternal grandmother.[8] She says that growing up in a dysfunctional family was difficult, but that growing up in a non-patriarchal environment had a beneficial impact on her. Having grown up without her father, she met her half-brothers for the first time when she was in her mid-twenties.[9]
Shafak added her mother's first name, Turkish for "dawn", to her own when constructing her pen name at the age of eighteen. Shafak spent her teenage years in Madrid, Jordan and Germany.[9]
Shafak studied an undergraduate degree in international relations at Middle East Technical University, and earned a master's degree in women's studies.[10] She holds a Ph.D. in political science.[11][12] She has taught at universities in Turkey. Later emigrating to the United States, she was a fellow at Mount Holyoke College, a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, and was a tenured professor at the University of Arizona in Near Eastern studies.[9][13]
In the UK, she held the Weidenfeld Visiting Professorship in Comparative European Literature at St Anne's College, University of Oxford, for the 2017–2018 academic year,[14] where she is an honorary fellow.[15]
Career
Shafak has published 21 books, fiction and nonfiction.[16]
Fiction
Shafak's first novel, Pinhan, was awarded the Rumi Prize in 1998, a Turkish literary prize.[17]
Shafak's 1999 novel Mahrem (The Gaze) was awarded "Best Novel" by the Turkish Authors' Association in 2000.[18]
Her next novel, Bit Palas (The Flea Palace, 2002), was shortlisted for Independent Best Foreign Fiction in 2005.[19][20]
Shafak released her first novel in English, The Saint of Incipient Insanities, in 2004.[9]
Her second novel in English, The Bastard of Istanbul, was long-listed for the Orange Prize.[21] It addresses the Armenian genocide, which is denied by the Turkish government. Shafak was prosecuted in July 2006 on charges of "insulting Turkishness" (Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code) for discussing the genocide in the novel. Had she been convicted, she would have faced a maximum prison sentence of three years. The Guardian commented that The Bastard of Istanbul may be the first Turkish novel to address the genocide.[22] She was acquitted of these charges in September 2006 at the prosecutor's request.[23]
Shafak's novel The Forty Rules of Love (Aşk in Turkish) became a bestseller in Turkey upon its release;[24] it sold more than 200,000 copies by 2009, surpassing a previous record of 120,000 copies set by Orhan Pamuk's The New Life.[25] In France, it was awarded a Prix ALEF* – Mention Spéciale Littérature Etrangère.[26] It was also nominated for the 2012 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.[27] In 2019, it was listed by the BBC as one of the 100 "most inspiring" novels[28] and one of the "100 novels that shaped our world".[29]
Her 2012 novel Honour, which focuses on an honour killing,[30] was nominated for the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize and 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction,[31][32][33] followed by The Architect's Apprentice, a historical fiction novel about a fictional apprentice to Mimar Sinan, in 2014.[9]
Her novel Three Daughters of Eve (2017), set in Istanbul and Oxford from the 1980s to the present day,[34] was chosen by London Mayor Sadiq Khan as his favourite book of the year.[35] American writer Siri Hustvedt also praised the book.[36] The book explores themes of secular versus orthodox religious practice, conservative versus liberal politics and modern Turkish attitudes towards these .[37]
Following Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell and Sjon, Shafak was selected as the 2017 writer for the Future Library project. Her work The Last Taboo is the third part of a collection of 100 literary works that will not be published until 2114.[38]
Shafak's 2019 novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, revolving around the life of an Istanbul sex worker, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.[39] In 2019, Shafak was investigated by Turkish prosecutors for addressing child abuse and sexual violence in her fiction writing.[5]
Shafak released her twelfth novel The Island of Missing Trees in 2021.[40]
Her latest novel is There are Rivers in the Sky, a split-timeline novel about water, that reaches from the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal to a hydrologist in present day London.[41]
Non-fiction
Shafak's non-fiction essays in Turkish have been collected in four books: Med-Cezir (2005),[42] Firarperest (2010),[43] Şemspare (2012)[44] and Sanma ki Yalnızsın (2017).[45]
In 2020, Shafak published How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division.[2]
In the media
Shafak has written for Time,[46] The Guardian,[47] La Repubblica,[48] The New Yorker,[49] The New York Times,[50] Der Spiegel[51] and New Statesman.[52]
Shafak has been a panellist or commentator on BBC World,[53] Euronews[54] and Al Jazeera English.[55]
Until 2009 when she transferred to Habertürk, Shafak was a writer for the newspaper Zaman, which was known for its affiliation with Fethullah Gülen.
In July 2017, Elif Shafak was chosen as a "castaway" on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.[56]
Shafak has been a TEDGlobal speaker three times.[57]
Plagiarism
In January 2024, Shafak found guilty of plagiarism in her book Bit Palas. She plagiarised characters and plot of Mine Kırıkkanat's book, Sinek Sarayı.[58] Shafak has appealed the decision of the court.[59]
Themes
Istanbul
Istanbul has been prominent in Shafak's writing. She depicts the city as a melting pot of different cultures and various contradictions.[60] Shafak has remarked: "Istanbul makes one comprehend, perhaps not intellectually but intuitively, that East and West are ultimately imaginary concepts, and can thereby be de-imagined and re-imagined."[46] In the same essay written for Time magazine Shafak says: "East and West is no water and oil. They do mix. And in a city like Istanbul they mix intensely, incessantly, amazingly."[46] The New York Times Book Review said of Shafak, "she has a particular genius for depicting backstreet Istanbul, where the myriad cultures of the Ottoman Empire are still in tangled evidence on every family tree."[4]
In a piece she wrote for the BBC, Shafak said, "Istanbul is like a huge, colourful Matrushka – you open it and find another doll inside. You open that, only to see a new doll nesting. It is a hall of mirrors where nothing is quite what it seems. One should be cautious when using categories to talk about Istanbul. If there is one thing the city doesn't like, it is clichés."[61]
Eastern and Western cultures
Shafak blends Eastern and Western ways of storytelling, and draws on oral and written culture. In The Washington Post, Ron Charles Wrote: "Shafak speaks in a multivalent voice that captures the roiling tides of diverse cultures."[62] Mysticism and specifically Sufism has also been a theme in her work, particularly in The Forty Rules of Love.[63][64][24]
Feminism
A feminist and advocate for gender equality, Shafak's writing has addressed numerous feminist issues and the role of women in society.[63][60][34] Examples include motherhood[63] and violence against women.[60] In an interview with William Skidelsky for The Guardian, she said: "In Turkey, men write and women read. I want to see this change."[65]
Human rights
Shafak's novels have explored human rights issues, particularly those in Turkey. She has said: "What literature tries to do is to re-humanize people who have been dehumanized ... People whose voices we never hear. That's a big part of my work".[66] Specific topics have included persecution of Yazidis, the Armenian genocide[60] and the treatment of various minorities in Turkey.[66]
Views
Freedom of speech
Shafak is an advocate for freedom of expression.[67] While taking part in the Free Speech Debate, she commented: "I am more interested in showing the things we have in common as fellow human beings, sharing the same planet and ultimately, the same sorrows and joys rather than adding yet another brick in the imaginary walls erected between cultures/religions/ethnicities."[68]
Political views
Shafak has been critical of the presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, describing his tenure as leading to increased authoritarianism in Turkey.[69] She signed an open letter in protest against Turkey's Twitter ban in 2014, commenting: "the very core of democracy ... is lacking in today's Turkey".[70]
Shafak has spoken and written about various global political trends. In the 2010s, she drew parallels between Turkish political history and political developments in Europe and the United States.[64] Writing in The New Yorker in 2016, she said "Wave after wave of nationalism, isolationism, and tribalism have hit the shores of countries across Europe, and they have reached the United States. Jingoism and xenophobia are on the rise. It is an Age of Angst—and it is a short step from angst to anger and from anger to aggression."[49]
Shafak signed an open letter in protest against Russian persecution of homosexuals and blasphemy laws before Sochi 2014.[71]
Personal life
Shafak had lived in Istanbul, and in the United States before moving to the UK.[72] Shafak has lived in London since 2013,[9][73] but speaks of "carrying Istanbul in her soul".[74] As of 2019, Shafak had been in self-imposed exile from Turkey due to fear of prosecution.[64][75]
Shafak is married to the Turkish journalist Eyüp Can Sağlık, a former editor of the liberal newspaper Radikal, with whom she has a daughter and a son.[73][76] In 2017, Shafak came out as bisexual.[77]
Following the birth of her daughter in 2006, Shafak suffered from postnatal depression, a period she addressed in her memoir Black Milk.[78]
Awards and recognition
Book awards
Pinhan, The Great Rumi Award, Turkey 1998.[17]
The Gaze, Union of Turkish Writers' Best Novel Prize, 2000;[18] and
The Flea Palace, shortlisted for Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, United Kingdom 2005;[citation needed]
Soufi, mon amour (Phébus, 2011), Prix ALEF – Mention Spéciale Littérature Etrangère;[79]
The Forty Rules of Love, nominated for 2012 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award;[80]
Crime d'honneur (Phébus, 2013), 2013 Prix Relay des voyageurs;[81]
Honour, second place for the Prix Escapade, France 2014;[82]
The Architect's Apprentice, shortlisted for RSL Ondaatje Prize, 2015;[83]
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, 2019;[39]
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, shortlisted for Ondaatje Prize, 2020;[84]
The Island of Missing Trees, shortlisted for the Costa Book Award, 2021;[85]
Halldór Laxness International Literature Prize, 2021;[86]
The Island of Missing Trees, shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, 2022;[87]
The Island of Missing Trees, shortlisted for the British Book Awards, 2023;[88]
Other recognition
Maria Grazia Cutuli Award – International Journalism Prize, Italy 2006.[89]
Turkish Journalists and Writers Foundation "The Art of Coexistence Award, 2009";[90]
Marka Conference 2010 Award;[91]
Women To Watch Award, Mediacat & Advertising Age, March 2014;[92]
Asian Women of Achievement Awards 2015: Global Empowerment Award;[93]
2016 GTF Awards for Excellence in Promoting Gender Equality;[94]
BBC's 100 most inspiring and influential women, 2021.[95]
Bibliography
Turkish English
Name Year Publisher ISBN Name Year Publisher ISBN
Kem Gözlere Anadolu 1994 Evrensel 9789757837299
Pinhan 1997 Metis 975-342-297-0
Şehrin Aynaları 1999 Metis 975-342-298-9
Mahrem 2000 Metis 975-342-285-7 The Gaze 2006 Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd 978-0714531212
Bit Palas 2002 Metis 975-342-354-3 The Flea Palace 2007 Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd 978 0714531205
Araf 2004 Metis 978-975-342-465-3 The Saint of Incipient Insanities 2004 Farrar, Straus and Giroux 0-374-25357-9
Beşpeşe (with Murathan Mungan, Faruk Ulay, Celil Oker and Pınar Kür) 2004 Metis 975-342-467-1
Med-Cezir 2005 Metis 975-342-533-3
Baba ve Piç 2006 Metis 978-975-342-553-7 The Bastard of Istanbul 2007 Viking 0-670-03834-2
Siyah Süt 2007 Doğan 975-991-531-6 Black Milk: On Writing, Motherhood, and the Harem Within 2011 Viking 0-670-02264-0
Aşk 2009 Doğan 978-605-111-107-0 The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi 2010 Viking 0-670-02145-8
Kâğıt Helva 2010 Doğan 978-605-111-426-2
Firarperest 2010 Doğan 978-605-111-902-1
The Happiness of Blond People: A Personal Meditation on the Dangers of Identity 2011 Penguin 9780670921768
İskender 2011 Doğan 978-605-090-251-8 Honour 2012 Viking 0-670-92115-7
Şemspare 2012 Doğan 978-605-090-799-5
Ustam ve Ben 2013 Doğan 978-605-09-1803-8 The Architect's Apprentice 2014 Viking 978-024-100-491-3
Sakız Sardunya 2014 Doğan 978-605-09-2291-2
Havva'nın Üç Kızı 2016 Doğan 978-605-09-3537-0 Three Daughters of Eve 2016 Viking 978-024-128-804-7
Sanma ki Yalnızsın 2018 Doğan 978-605-095-146-2
On Dakika Otuz Sekiz Saniye 2018 Doğan 978-605-096-309-0 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World 2019 Viking 978-024-129-386-7
Aşkın Kırk Kuralı (compilation based on Aşk) 2019 Doğan Novus 978-605-095-864-5
Bölünmüş Bir Dünyada Akıl Sağlığımızı Nasıl Koruruz 2022 Doğan 978-625-821-547-2 How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division 2020 Welcome Collection / Profile Books 978-178-816-572-3
Kayıp Ağaçlar Adası 2023 Doğan 978-625-684-315-8 The Island of Missing Trees 2021 Viking 978-024-143-499-4
There Are Rivers in the Sky 2024 Viking 978-024-143-501-4
Novel
Essay / Anthology
Autobiography
Children's book
Short story
NOTE: Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd was bought out by Viking in 2011.
Byline: Katherine Waters
Elif Shafak is no stranger to multi-perspective stories that stretch across decades, countries and cultures; but There are Rivers in the Sky is unusual. The three protagonists in the Turkish-British writer's 13th novel may live in different times and places, but they're connected principally by water.
First, there's Arthur, born to abject poverty by the banks of the Thames in 1840. His mother, Arabella, is a tosher: a river scavenger who picks scraps from the river's foetid sludge to provide for her growing family. (Her husband drinks the money that should be feeding their children.) Raised in penury, Arthur is gifted -- or cursed -- with a prodigious memory and intellectual abilities. Formal education is beyond his reach, but his talents secure him a job with a master printer, and eventually a position at the British Museum, where he's tasked with deciphering the cuneiform tablets excavated from the library of the Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal. From these fragments, Arthur pieces together the first incomplete reading of The Epic of Gilgamesh, before setting off for Iraq, intent on discovering the missing tablets.
Next there's Zaleekhah, a modern-day hydrologist who, fleeing her broken marriage, moves to a houseboat on the Thames, not far from where Arthur was born nearly two centuries before. Upon noticing a leaking sink, she seeks out her landlady, an Irish tattoo-artist named Nen: the latter runs a studio opposite the British Museum where she specialises in inked cuneiform, and has a penchant for mudlarking where Arthur's mother once sifted silt. As the two women grow closer, Zaleekhah is forced into an emotional reckoning with her parents' long-ago deaths in a flood, and the effects of having been adopted by her wealthy uncle Malek who, like her mother, came to Britain from Iraq.
Finally there's Narin, a young Yazidi girl brought up by the banks of the Tigris in south-east Turkey, in a village that'll soon be inundated thanks to a newly constructed dam. She descends from a line of healers and seers, including her great-great-grandmother -- who captured Arthur's heart when he arrived in Nineveh to dig for those missing tablets.
Narin is slowly becoming deaf, and in spite of rumours of violence, her beloved grandmother and musician father decide to journey together to northern Iraq, to the Valley of Lalish, so that Narin can be baptised at the temple there before she loses her hearing completely. The year is 2014, and Isil are yet to launch their military offensive. Massacres, forced conversions and years of human trafficking lie ahead; but for now, Narin drinks in the sounds, sights and smells of her village while she can.
Unifying Shafak's three stories is the journey of a single drop of water, which makes its way through aquifers, atmospheric layers, different vessels and bodies. It opens the book in the form of a raindrop "no bigger than a bean and lighter than a chickpea", which falls upon the royal head of Ashurbanipal. As it comes into contact with each character, it imparts some of its history and absorbs new memories, linking them at an elemental level: it lands on Arthur's lips as a snowflake, travels as holy water from the Valley of Lalish for Narin's baptism, and is drunk by Zaleekhah before falling from her eyes as a tear.
This narrative conceit serves Shafak's political convictions. Traversing elemental states, fluvial systems and geographical borders with ease, There are Rivers in the Sky mocks the seriousness with which arbitrary circumstances of birth -- place, upbringing, gender, class, creed -- are upheld. It's also in keeping with Shafak's fabular mode of storytelling, which has seen her give voice to a fig tree in The Island of Missing Trees, inhabit the final moments of a dying sex-worker in 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, and structure her memoir on writing and motherhood, Black Milk, around six miniature "finger women" who represent different sides of her personality.
Yet this novel is less successful, less dramatically cohesive, than the above. Shafak is at home composing stories from multiple perspectives, and here moves easily between Arthur, Zaleekhah and Narin, but what grows between them is a confluence of themes and coincidences that, while illuminating the magic of storytelling, comes with a cost. Eager to uncover the connections between her characters' lives, Shafak doesn't give herself enough time to linger inside their heads.
Nonetheless, she also remains loyal to reality's refusal to be neatly tied up. She often leaves loose ends -- unusually for a writer who relies so heavily on plot for momentum -- and There are Rivers in the Sky is no exception. What happens to Narin's father? Is the final transaction undertaken by Zaleekhah and Nen as morally clear-cut as we might so easily believe? And if her characters live on, complicatedly, beyond the page, she thereby leaves her readers with a bleak question: in such fractured and violent times, what kind of stories are we leaving for future generations to tell?
There Are Rivers in the Sky is published by Viking at £18.99. To order your copy for £16.99, call 0808 196 6794 or visit Telegraph Books
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Credit: Ferhat Elik
Elif Shafak, author of There are Rivers in the Sky
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Gilgamesh Tablet written in cuneiform script
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"A novel that flows like water from Britain to Iraq; The narrative of Elif Shafak's There are Rivers in the Sky spans across decades, countries and cultures -- and is unified by a drop of water." Telegraph Online, 24 July 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A802465739/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=387122f2. Accessed 27 Aug. 2024.
In Elif Shafak's latest novel, a single raindrop rises and falls through millennia. In Nineveh, in the seventh century BC, it lands on the scalp of Ashurbanipal, a king whose obsession with building a great library saves the Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh from destruction for blasphemy; in 19th-century Constantinople, it lands on Arthur, who has just arrived on an official mission to find a missing section of the epic, depicting a pre-biblical flood. It reappears as the last drop of water in a bottle that terrified 21st-century Yazidis carry with them on their flight from slaughter into the parched mountains of Iraq.
The ninth novel the Turkish author has written in English and her 13th overall, There Are Rivers in the Sky is a story of "three characters, two rivers and one poem", she says. The rivers are the Thames and the Tigris, and the poem is Gilgamesh. But Shafak wanted to make a drop of water the unifying motif, she explains, because "when we talk about climate crisis we're talking about a crisis of fresh water, which affects everyone, but in some parts of the world it's particularly bad. Seven of the most water-stressed nations are in the Middle East and north Africa, and it has massive consequences for women and impoverished people."
We're talking in the study of Shafak's London home, where books of every genre tower in bookcases over a large leather-topped desk, beneath which a little white dog called Romeo makes himself comfortable. "I do a crazy amount of research," Shafak says. "You know, I was in academia for a long time, in political science, women's and cultural studies. That interdisciplinary knowledge is something that I really treasure, and I don't like it when people put it into separate boxes. I love novels that are full of ideas, multiplicity, nuances, layers -- this really speaks to my heart. So there's a lot of research, but there's also a lot of imagination and intuition."
When we meet, it is the end of the school term, and both Shafak's teenage children are hanging around, having just finished important exams. But an aura of serenity emanates from the household, as well as from Shafak herself. The surfaces are uncluttered. She glides in with glasses of tea and large slices of homemade cake, before settling down to explain her dismay about the state of the world and her belief that fiction is one of its last democratic spaces.
It's not that Shafak is averse to other forms of discourse. Her novels are interspersed with works of nonfiction, most recently an elegant meditation on the impact of social media, How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division. She has delivered three Ted Talks, written multiple newspaper opinion columns, and gives regular updates to her 1.6 million followers on X (formerly Twitter). She also has her own weekly Substack, titled Unmapped Storylands, to mop up anecdotes and insights from her personal diaries. These range from neglected historical characters she has discovered to musings on the idiosyncrasies of language, and writers' tips ("Do not spill tea on keyboard").
But the novels are central. "In many ways," she says, "I think fiction is the antidote to our extremely polarised and fractured times. It's a place where we can still hold nuanced conversations, have multiple thoughts at the same time, open up difficult issues and calmly ruminate. And also do some slow thinking, because we're always rushing into judgments. It's about empathy, trying to put yourself in the shoes of another person, to become that person for a few hours over a few days. I think that's a very good and humbling exercise for the soul."
Her own novels occupy a charmed space, where romance meets religion ( Three Daughters of Eve ), the political traumas of Cyprus are observed by a fig tree ( The Island of Missing Trees ) and an entire novel is narrated from a rubbish bin by a murdered Istanbul sex worker (the Booker-shortlisted 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World ).
"I'm interested in mixing east and west, folk story with the European canon. I want my fiction to be bridge-building, but my heart always goes towards the peripheries -- to people whose stories we don't hear about, truths that have been erased," Shafak says. "In some ways this is my own journey, because of the way my life evolved. None of us belongs in a single box but I have a multiplicity."
Shafak spent her early years with her grandmother, after her parents split up and her philosopher father disappeared from her life for 20 years. Unusually for a Turkish woman of her generation in a conservative neighbourhood of Ankara, her mother went back to university to complete the degree she had dropped out of to get married.
Her grandmother, says Shafak, was "a bit of a healer", who would melt lead to ward off the evil eye, and was also a storyteller, "so I'm very deeply versed in the oral culture of Anatolia". At the age of eight, Shafak started writing a diary. "But real life was so boring that I had almost nothing to say, and so I started to write about people who didn't exist and things that hadn't happened. It was a very quick journey from diaries into short stories, and from that moment onwards, I kept writing, always."
When she was 10, life suddenly became more challenging. Her mother graduated with multiple languages, landed a job with the foreign ministry -- and her first posting was Spain. "It was a huge culture shock for me to be zoomed into this very international, posh school in the middle of Madrid, where I was the only Turkish student," Shafak recalls. "I had to learn Spanish very fast. I had to learn English very fast, and I really cherished that experience. To be able to read Don Quixote in Spanish; to suddenly discover that there's a vast literature in English that I could now access -- that was the brilliant part. The difficult part was keeping up with the other kids. I was a massive introvert and I was bullied at school a lot."
Writing in another language gave me the distance to look at where I came from
Although Spanish was her second language, English became her safe space, in which she wrote poems and kept up her diary. Many years later, after publishing her early novels in Turkish, she made the decision to switch over entirely to English. "There came a moment in my life when I felt so suffocated," she says. "But that was a very scary thing to do, because you're nobody. You have to start from scratch again. At the same time, paradoxically, it was liberating, because being a novelist in Turkey is really hard, and being a woman is even harder. Everything you say, everything you write, can be attacked, targeted; you can be put on trial, exiled, imprisoned -- words are heavy, you know. Writing in another language gave me the cognitive distance that I needed to be able to take a closer look at where I come from."
The second novel that she published in English, The Bastard of Istanbul, dealt with the Armenian genocide of 1915, which the Turkish state still does not acknowledge. It was longlisted for the women's prize in the UK but found a different sort of notoriety in Turkey itself, where she was prosecuted for "insulting Turkishness". Though she was later acquitted at the request of the prosecutor, she was also investigated for obscenity for 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, and for an earlier novel, The Gaze. Neither of those cases has been resolved, as a result of which she has now gone into voluntary exile from her homeland.
"For me," she says, "the biggest turning point was being put on trial after The Bastard of Istanbul. I was pregnant at the time. And by coincidence, I was acquitted the day after I gave birth. The whole year was really unsettling. There were groups on the streets spitting at my picture and burning EU flags. I was accused of insulting Turkishness, even though nobody knew what that meant. And it was quite surreal, because the words of fictional characters were taken out of the novel and used as evidence in the courtroom, as a result of which my Turkish lawyer had to defend my Armenian fictional characters."
She is keen not to paint a completely dark picture, "because I also received so much love from readers in Turkey". But, she adds, "I think that scarred me in many ways. In terms of authorities, it's very difficult to be a novelist in Turkey, especially the way I write, because I do question the silences in our history."
There Are Rivers in the Sky goes into battle once again on two fronts that are unlikely to win Shafak friends among the powers-that-be across the Middle East. The first is against the dam-building of Turkey's President Erdogan, which led to the flooding of the ancient cave city of Hasankeyf on the Tigris, in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish south-east region. Up to 80,000 people who had lived there were displaced, in what a local activist group described in 2020 as an "apocalypse".
There may be close to 3,000 Yazidi women and girls still missing -- many of these women are held captive
"This entire area is so precious, because of its history, but also its ecology. For a dam, which lasts only 50 years, they've destroyed thousands of years of cultural value and artefacts," she says. "Also, when you build dams, it alters the flow of the water downriver, and affects other countries as well. So we need international solutions. We need countries to act together, rather than just one country taking the water for themselves."
The second injustice it confronts is the persecution of the Yazidi people, a religious minority who have faced centuries of massacres across the Middle East. Fleeing the flooding of their valley, the characters of Narin and her grandmother blunder into the 2014 genocide by Islamic State in Iraq, when more than 5,000 were killed and thousands of women and children were taken prisoner and forced into sexual slavery.
"The Yazidis are one of the most maligned, misunderstood and mistreated minorities by almost every culture or religion surrounding them throughout history, and they are a very delicate, vulnerable, beautiful community," Shafak says. "I want to talk about this, because, as we're speaking, there may be close to 3,000 Yazidi women and girls still missing. And many of these women are held captive in -- quote unquote -- ordinary households in Turkey, in Syria, in Iraq, in Saudi Arabia."
Just a few years ago, one Yazidi girl was rescued from a house in the Ankara neighbourhood where Shafak herself grew up. "So I keep thinking, you know, just a few streets away from my grandmother's home, in another ordinary house, a girl has been held captive and suffered horrific cruelties. How is it possible that people don't see?" she asks. "How is it possible that they are so numb? There's a lot we still need to talk about, because the genocide is not over yet."
Underlying all the storylines are highly topical questions about colonial history and the ownership of cultural artefacts. As she was writing the novel, the temperature of the debate suddenly rose, with the scandals about alleged thefts from the British Museum in London and the provenance of objects at the New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
"To whom does cultural heritage belong?" Shafak asks. "It's a particularly important issue for many of us coming from the non-western world. Of course, it belongs to all humanity. But at the same time, it belongs to the minorities of the region, which we never talk about. It's very complicated. There are multiple layers, you know. That's why I wanted to write this novel -- to tackle it."
* There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak will be published on 8 August by Viking. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
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"Elif Shafak: 'As a writer in Turkey, you can be attacked, put on trial, imprisoned'; The novelist on the 'surreal' experience of being prosecuted for her fiction, voluntary exile from her homeland - and why fiction is the antidote to our polarised, fractured times." Guardian [London, England], 3 Aug. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A803674628/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=11942b9f. Accessed 27 Aug. 2024.
Byline: Alex Clark
Two children are divided by centuries, countries, language and religion, though each of those things also unite them, aided by the principle of "aquatic memory" that dominates a novel that is always absorbing and often painfully affecting. The first is Arthur Smyth, born on the foreshore of the River Thames in 1840 to an impoverished and terrified young woman, and given his name by the "toshers" -- shoreline scavengers and foragers -- who gather around her and pronounce him King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums. Arthur is both blessed and cursed by a phenomenal memory, and although grinding poverty and a vicious, violent father blight his early life, his intellectual gifts allow him first to find work at a printing and publishing company and then at the British Museum.
In 2014, at the edge of the Tigris, Narin lives in a small village in which her Yazidi community forms an even smaller, and increasingly marginalised, part. Cared for by her grandmother, a water-dowser and storyteller, she is losing her hearing and anticipates that soon, her world will fall silent. Before then, however, she is to travel to Iraq to be baptised in the holy valley of Lalish, the more usual home ceremony having been made impossible by the encroachment of the bulldozers working on a vast dam.
The links between the two young characters will take several hundred pages to unfold, although the narrative is seeded throughout with hints and signs, and given additional help by a determined contemporary hydrologist, Zaleekhah, whose passion for uncovering the world's buried rivers is providing a distraction from her broken marriage.
It is, by evident design, a complicated structure and a busily peopled milieu: the reader is presented with a portrait of ancient Mesopotamia and the destruction of Nineveh, the roiling, stinking streets of Victorian London and the far more recent persecution of the Yazidis, including the massacre of thousands in Sinjar at the hands of Islamic State in 2014. It would be possible for these juxtapositions -- meat pies, pickled whelks and a cameo from Charles Dickens giving way to child abduction and enslavement -- to strike a jarring, and even twee, note. But Shafak is a novelist whose interest in mapping the intricately related world and its history goes beyond literary device; her determination to trace connections is a matter of ambition, not merely aesthetics.
It is also a novel that reflects on the persistence of global inequality: the image of the apocalyptic flood appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh before the Bible; the lapis lazuli tablets on which the poem is carved end up in Victorian imperial museums; the displaced and captured child from a war zone might represent the chance of a healthy new organ to her rich, western counterpart.
Like Arthur -- who is modelled on the real-life assyriologist George Smith, who taught himself to decode cuneiform tablets and first translated Gilgamesh into English -- Shafak is a voraciously eclectic reader. The reign of Ashurbanipal, John Snow's fight to prove cholera outbreaks originated in London's tainted water supply and not its foul air, the science behind changing hydroclimates; all find their way into her novel. You can feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information, and the almost breezy briskness with which it is relayed, but it is balanced by the delicacy of Shafak's observations about human dynamics, the furtiveness of her characters' most deeply held emotions and desires.
* There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak is published by Viking (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
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"There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak review -- water, water everywhere; The links between a 19th-century Londoner who escapes poverty and a Yazidi girl born 200 years later are gradually revealed in an absorbing novel that reflects on global inequality." Observer [London, England], 5 Aug. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A803841028/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=416aef14. Accessed 27 Aug. 2024.
Byline: Michael Donkor
As water scarcity grows, sea levels rise around the world and scandals over the illegal dumping of sewage into our rivers and seas continue, a novel about the politics and preciousness of water is timely. There Are Rivers in the Sky begins with an appealing magical realist proposition: it will follow the lifespan of a raindrop, as it is consumed, subsumed and transformed across continents and centuries. So far, so Elif Shafak: the central figure of her previous novel, The Island of Missing Trees, was a talking fig tree that held forth on recent Cypriot history.
Here, we begin in ancient Mesopotamia. The droplet falls into the hair of despot Ashurbanipal. An "erudite king", presiding over an extraordinary library which includes the Epic of Gilgamesh, Ashurbanipal is nervously cognisant of the radical potential of storytelling. Fast forward, rather jerkily, to mucky mid-Victorian London. The raindrop has become a snowflake. We meet it settling on the tongue of urchin Arthur Smyth, as his mother -- a destitute mudlark -- gives birth to him on the banks of the Thames.
The initial raindrop conceit disappears a little as we are introduced to another key character on the edge of a different river. It's 2014, and Narin is a nine-year-old Yazidi girl being baptised beside the Tigris, accompanied by her weatherbeaten grandmother. This elder is a renowned healer who is keen to take her granddaughter to Lalish, a place of significance for the historically marginalised Yazidi people, situated in war-ravaged Iraq.
Our final protagonist is Zaleekhah Clarke, a hydrologist fascinated by the notion that water might have memory. It's 2018 and she's moving on to a houseboat on the Chelsea Embankment, much to the befuddlement of her adopted father Uncle Malek. He's acted as Zaleekhah's guardian since her childhood, when her parents were killed in an accident. The dramatic nature of this incident remains tantalisingly undisclosed for several chapters.
Shafak's homiletic narrator tells us that water can initiate the "melding of markers". Soon enough, our principal curiosity is about how these distinctly demarcated narrative sections might be brought together. As is Shafak's stock in trade, unlikely characters are united through vibrant recurring motifs, fabulist coincidences and rigorously highlighted thematic parallels. The lamassu -- a mythic hybrid creature -- is a symbol that delights both Ashurbanipal and Nen, a charismatic tattooist who meets melancholic Zaleekhah and makes her feel less of an "outsider ... an accidental guest who walked in through the wrong door at the wrong time". The motif of parental abandonment or neglect is ever-present in all three timelines. And Arthur Smyth's rags-to-riches trajectory, based on the life of Victorian assyriologist George Smyth, includes expeditions to Asia that lead him to Narin's ancestors.
The spotlight on Yazidi culture, and the brutal persecution of this community, is the novel's most unequivocal achievement
There is, perhaps, pleasure to be had in Shafak's corralling of divergent subject matter around ideas of the pull of the past and the endurance of water. However, reading this novel is hard going. Much of this difficulty is to do with an overall bagginess -- both at the level of the sentence and in terms of overall structure. It's possible to see Shafak's maximalist descriptive style as generous, offering us a "coruscating kaleidoscope of colours and patterns". There are, here and there, beautifully delicate figurative gestures: waves are "pleats"; a worried facial expression "curdles" to panic. But there's a lot of exposition, too, obstructing a lasting connection between the reader and the varied worlds and times we are invited into.
Superfluity is also prominent in sections where research -- about cuneiform, epidemiology or the sociogeography of London -- is on show. Dialogue, too, isn't always successful. Nen is especially guilty of off-putting, hollow and unconvincing loftiness. At an important turning point in her relationship with Zaleekhah, Nen says, "I guess what water is to you, history is to me: an enigma too vast to comprehend, something more important than my own little life, and yet, at some level, also deeply personal. Does that make sense?"
There's a vein of sentimentality running through characters' speech: "Words," one of Arthur's kindly benefactors announces, "are like birds ... when you publish books, you are setting caged birds free ... you never know whom those words will reach, whose hearts will succumb to their sweet song."
And the endless analogies concerning water lose their charm as Arthur's Dickens-meets-Rider Haggard saga to the Near East rolls on, and as Narin and her grandmother embark on a perilous pilgrimage: "some people are restless like rivers"; "women are expected to be like rivers -- readjusting, reshaping"; "questions ... set off a ripple of other questions, as a leaping carp leaves a trail of watery wreath in its wake"; a kiss is "two drops of water finding their way to each other".
One anxiety with a multi-perspective novel like this is that one storyline might overshadow others. Here, Zaleekhah's sections don't pack an emotional punch and the romantic arc is unsatisfyingly predictable. The resolution of her story -- an intersection with Narin's plot -- veers towards ludicrousness. Arthur's chapters, with their concerns about the restitution of plundered artwork and the sacrifices a person might make when driven by academic obsession, are more involving. But it's the spotlight on Yazidi culture, and the brutal persecution of this community, that is the novel's most unequivocal achievement.
About three-quarters of the way through there is a heart-rending portrait of Yazidi families fleeing the guns of Islamic State militants: "an endless stream of human beings -- raddled bodies push[ing] against gravity. Mothers clutch their babies; pregnant women try to protect the precious life within. Children, dazed and disoriented, trudge silently, too scared to cry. An elderly woman begs her family to leave her behind to die. All [...] carrying their limbs like hollow trees ... no shade to be found ... the heat rising from the ground twists and writhes to form a ghostly calligraphy." It's a horrifically recognisable image of ethnic cleansing that cannot fail to anger, disturb and move us. Unfortunately, fulsomeness elsewhere means this plangent note is woefully drowned out.
* There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak is published by Viking (£18.99). To support the Guardian and the Observer buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Guardian Newspapers Limited
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"There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak review -- story of a raindrop; This ambitious, multi-perspective novel about the politics and preciousness of water ranges from ancient Mesopotamia to contemporary London." Guardian [London, England], 7 Aug. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A804157423/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=a1e67b85. Accessed 27 Aug. 2024.
Elif Shafak’s new novel, “There Are Rivers in the Sky,” follows the same drop of water from the Tigris to the Thames, from antiquity to the 19th century to today.
THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, by Elif Shafak
However water first arrived on Earth — we still don’t really know — every drop in our bodies today is the original stuff. Water has seen it all: the rise and fall of every self-important species, every empire, every catastrophe, collapse and extinction. That water-drop perspective guides the premise of “There Are Rivers in the Sky,” the engaging and melancholy new novel by Elif Shafak in which a single water molecule falls upon characters spanning centuries.
The novel journeys between the two rivers, the Tigris and the Thames, from Mesopotamia to London and back again, beginning with the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. The learned tyrant murders, tortures and wages endless war all while gripping the tablet of his favorite poem, “The Epic of Gilgamesh.” This story of humanity’s first great antihero will echo across millenniums, even as Ashurbanipal’s empire disintegrates. The storm comes and the flood begins, “for, unlike humans, water has no regard for social status or royal titles.”
Ashurbanipal’s vignette only sets the table, however, for the three main protagonists. The first is Arthur Smyth, a polymath born into London’s worst slums at their industrially polluted zenith in the 1840s. Arthur suffers from hyperthymesia, the rare ability to remember staggering amounts of one’s life in vivid, suffocating detail. He follows an unlikely path from the city’s “sewers and slums” to working in the British Museum where by chance he Good-Will-Huntings the cuneiform tablets of the Assyrian Empire. He becomes obsessed with ancient Nineveh and makes it his life’s work to unearth the secrets of this long-gone civilization.
Jumping from 19th-century London to Turkey in 2014, we find Narin, a young Yazidi girl who is slowly going deaf. She lives with her family in Hasankeyf, where a massive dam is about to block the Tigris and submerge the ancient town and its archaeological history. With this stretch of the Tigris endangered, Narin’s grandmother decides to take her to Iraq for her baptism just as the first murmurs of the terrorist group ISIS echo across the region.
Finally, Dr. Zaleekhah Clarke is a hydrologist in 2018 who’s going through a divorce, halfheartedly suicidal and vexed by a relationship with her more traditional uncle, who raised her after the death of her parents. Zaleekhah gives us a full-spectrum overview of humanity’s troubled relationship to water: “Even after all these years of studying it, water never ceases to surprise her, astonishingly resilient but also acutely vulnerable — a drying, dying force.”
There is many a meditation on water throughout the novel, but Zaleekhah’s chapters anchor the author’s preoccupation as we follow the character down fascinating rabbit holes like the lost rivers of London — diverted, destroyed or straight-jacketed in concrete. Some of the novel’s best passages explores this curiosity about the materiality of water and what our species has done with it.
Shafak’s language often takes on the cadence of a fable, a poetic rhythm that can vary between beauty and a tendency to hold the reader’s hand. The themes are spoken plainly and repeated: ecology, persecution, memory and mental health ring throughout. This fabulist style causes a distinct sagging in Narin’s sections, as two thirds of her story is framed mostly as a running Q. and A. between the girl and her grandmother. This aphorism-packed dialogue contains interesting nuggets of Yazidi history — and Narin’s character finally feels embodied with the arrival of ISIS late in the book — but her section never feels as dynamic or lived-in as the rest of the novel.
Arthur’s sections, on the other hand, soar with vivid, Dickensian detail (Dickens himself even makes a winking cameo), summoning the pleasure of falling away into another time and place. Based on the Assyriologist George Smith, Arthur makes his fascination with Nineveh, and its clay tablets that tell a story “as old as recorded time,” ours too. With gorgeous writing throughout and many particularly stunning paragraphs that you’ll want to mark up and return to, these are the moments when “There Are Rivers in the Sky” explodes into a roaring journey through ecology and memory.
Of course, the success of a novel this sprawling has much to do with how the author lands the plane. Some of the connections between these various threads are more rewarding than others. When the puzzle pieces fit into place, and the fates of the present-day characters collide, the final twist is both contrived and genuinely moving.
Shafak asks us to think of water as not a resource but a companion, to imagine its precious, ancient story. She reminds us that the story of written language, from the counting of cereal crops to the first epic tale of a deluge, was born from the water feeding the harvests of Mesopotamia and used to mold the first cuneiform tablets. She reminds us, powerfully, of the material nature of human thought and culture, the continuity of time and the proximity of our ancestors.
THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY | By Elif Shafak | Knopf | 444 pp. | $30
PHOTO: (PHOTOGRAPH BY Hoi Chan FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 The New York Times
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Markley, Stephen. "How Does a Single Water Droplet Connect People Across Centuries?" New York Times [Digital Edition], 18 Aug. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A805346881/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=acbfef17. Accessed 27 Aug. 2024.
ELIF SHAFAK
The Island of Missing Trees
New York. Bloomsbury.
2021.368 pages.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE Women's Prize for Fiction 2022, Elif Shafak's thirteenth novel, The Island of Missing Trees, revisits Shafak's much-frequented topics of identity, memory, and gender. Divided into six parts and preceded by a prologue, the novel features a multilayered and polyphonic narrative, stylistically reminiscent of her previous novels, including 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (2019). Within this subtly knitted narrative structure, Shafak portrays different ways of life, expressed through the stories of various life-forms and connected to each other under the common denominator of grief--namely, grief for the loss of home, lover, and grief for the loss of biodiversity. Yet the novel is also about a sense of longing for wholeness, oneness, and harmony, not only between people but also between all elements of the wider ecosystem.
Foregrounding the notion of relationality, The Island of Missing Trees interweaves the Anthropocene with the ecological system, creating a narrative that promotes a holistic vision of posthumanism while situating human suffering side by side with the distress experienced by the ecosystem due to the atrocities visited upon it by the human world. To this end, she presents a mythical arboreal point of view, rendering the theme of ecological consciousness as a stylized expression that lays emphasis on the notion of multiplicity. And around this ecological consciousness, Shafak interlaces the themes of love, hate, and death through a double narrative structure that alternates between 1974 and the 2010s, and geographically between Cyprus and London, bridged at the center by the narrative of a conscious, speaking fig tree.
The historical vein of the narrative deals with the period before and after the partition of Cyprus and its damaging effects on people and the landscape. While depicting this political and military crisis, Shafak avoids giving precedence to any particular group by referring to the inhabitants of the island only as "islanders." Thus, the impartial tone prompts an empathetic insight toward a harmonious coexistence, not only among the members of different ethnic groups but also between the human and the nonhuman world.
This stance is infused into the contemporary narrative, which is set in north London a few days before Christmas. The festive mood of the holiday season is overshadowed by the prospect of a cyclone and also a familial trauma involving a teenage schoolgirl, Ada (whose name means island in Turkish), her Turkish Cypriot archaeologist mother, Defne (a Turkish name with Greek origin, meaning laurel tree), and her Greek Cypriot ecologist and botanist father named Kostas, working on the role of fig trees in restoring biodiversity. Within this multilayered structure, the narrative discloses the troubling experience of each character with the theme of loss--respectively, loss of a mother, loss of a spouse, loss of roots, and loss of natural habitat. Through Shafak's incisive storytelling, these stories of the human and the nonhuman world grow into each other and create a saga on whose surface various forms of sorrow are inscribed.
The reciprocity between the human and the nonhuman world is further made evident in the way the novel structurally alludes to the botanical process of burying and unburying a tree, a beautifully constructed symbolic trope that both warns against digging up the past in an antagonistic fashion--thus unearthing conflicts--and proposes reconciliation and reconnection with one's roots no matter how tangled they are. In this regard, the novel points to the impact of revelations on personal as well as social levels, and through these revelations it is not the feeling of anger that is communicated but understanding of grief, an emotional state described in the novel as "a language" that is universal.
Although this language might seem relevant only to human beings at first sight, Shafak makes it equally pertinent to the nonhuman world in her narrative, offering an aestheticized construction of the ecosystem by drawing attention to the ornate patterns in nature, including the behaviors of flies, mosquitos, ants, bees, and butterflies. Accordingly, she constructs a fig tree as a major character in the novel, through whose point of view the reader gets a perspective into the subtle sensitivities of the nonhuman world, which, in turn, facilitates a nuanced vantage point bringing together different forms of subjectivities like a rhizome and connecting each experience materially and semantically. This Deleuzian rhizomatic structure is amplified by multiple viewpoints that are intricately interwoven, further embodying Deleuze's conceptualization of "the fold" as an essential aspect of subjectivity, which is influenced by the interaction between the inside and outside, the private and public, the organic and inorganic.
Given this relationship, Shafak delves into the ways in which various folds shape subjectivity, investigating further the possibility of a nonhuman subjectivity. Regarding this matter, she depicts in-depth the invisible aspects and nuances of the nonhuman world, the world of trees in particular, and in doing so offers a stimulating perspective that raises awareness and sensitivity to the arboreal world. Through vividly expressed portrayals, Shafak weaves an intricate narrative that fuses the workings of these two disparate worlds into each other, creating a harmonious symbiosis.
Thus, the holistic viewpoint in the novel proliferates by incorporating various subplots and narrative modalities that bring together the mythical with the real, where historiographic metafiction coalesces into magical realism. With references to mythology and folk culture, the novel consolidates the complex interaction between the human and nonhuman life, depicting with vivid imagery how the suffering of one influences the other (and vice versa) in a way where no party emerges victorious. In this way, the novel invites a festive reading experience where each section explores a distinct experience relevant to the human and nonhuman world but that promotes an all-encompassing and reconciliatory posthumanist insight against all forms of division. Overall, the novel accentuates the wonders of the ecosystem within a complex narrative of twists and turns, hope and despair, missing and finding, burying and unburying, folding and unfolding, which is held together by the unifying power of love and empathy.
Zeynep Z. Atayurt-Fenge
Ankara University
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 University of Oklahoma
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com
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Atayurt-Fenge, Zeynep Z. "ELIF SHAFAK: The Island of Missing Trees." World Literature Today, vol. 97, no. 1, Jan.-Feb. 2023, pp. 76+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A731501316/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e03cf3d0. Accessed 27 Aug. 2024.
Elif Shafak
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World
New York. Bloomsbury. 2019. 320 pages.
THE TALE OF Tequila Leila begins with an end. The first page of Elif Shafak's new novel, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, finds Leila in a garbage dumpster on the outskirts of Istanbul: "she now realized ... that her heart had just stopped beating, and her breathing had abruptly ceased, and whichever way she looked at her situation there was no denying that she was dead." This surprising device immediately captures the reader's attention, and curiosity commands you turn the page and continue turning pages--faster.
Leilas brain is busy for ten minutes and thirty-eight seconds after her heart stops, and the next two-thirds of the novel trace Leila's life: her early years in a small Turkish city, how she ended up in a brothel in Istanbul, the hardships and hard-won comforts of that life, and how it ended. The final third of the story is taken up by Leilas five closest friends, a band of outcasts who make difficult lives endurable--sometimes joyful--on the fringes of a city, country, and society in constant flux.
The structure of this novel is both intellectually satisfying and intuitive, divided into three parts: mind, body, and soul. The chapters of the mind are titled to indicate how many minutes have elapsed since Leila's heart has stopped. Each memory is associated with a taste or a smell--lemon, cardamom, chocolate, wedding cake, single-malt whiskey, sulfuric acid--which is inextricably linked to a transformation in her life.
The backstories of Leila's band of friends--her chosen family ("in the desert of life, the fool travels alone and the wise by caravan")--are interspersed throughout the narrative as each makes their entrance into Leila's life. The cast is rich and diverse, each sharing a common characteristic: the homesickness and vulnerability of those who don't fit into the increasingly narrow confines of the socially acceptable.
The many disparate cultures of Turkey suffuse this tale, illuminating the charms and conflicts that both destroy and sustain. Superstition, such as not eating peaches during pregnancy so the baby won't be born covered in fuzz, coexist alongside such modern marvels as the fourth-longest bridge in the world, spanning the Bosphorous and linking Asian Istanbul with European Istanbul.
Shafak firmly places Leila's life and death in context, playing out against the backdrop of a convulsing Istanbul in the grip of revolutionary forces from right and left. Shafak weaves intricate details, juxtaposing the changes in Leilas personal circumstances with the changes in Turkey's societal circumstances. Leila, whose father's family is Kurdish, grows up in a house abruptly abandoned by a deported Armenian family. Her father becomes more religiously conservative as society become more "westernized."
Shafak's themes are timely and timeless: sex workers and trafficking, the exploitation of refugees, secrets that corrupt, willful ignorance, violence on a grand scale as well as up close and personal, love lost and found, and treacherous hope, which we cannot live with or without. Though often grim, Shafak leavens her story with arch humor and wordplay. "If Paris was the city of love, Jerusalem the city of God, and Las Vegas the city of sin, Istanbul was the city of multitasking." Shafak is multitasking throughout.
A blue betta fish, kept in a bowl in the house where Leila is born, is released upon the birth of this long-awaited baby. The betta symbolizes individuality, solitude, strength, freedom, beauty, and defiant spirit, all of which are double-edged swords for Leila. The betta is used in the book design as a scene separator--a thoughtful element--and the fish reappears at the end, which is also a beginning.
Michelle Lancaster
Spur, Texas
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 University of Oklahoma
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com
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Lancaster, Michelle. "Elif Shafak: 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World." World Literature Today, vol. 94, no. 1, winter 2020, pp. 76+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A611170750/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5b46fdf5. Accessed 27 Aug. 2024.
Elif Shafak
10 MINUTES 38 SECONDS IN THIS STRANGE WORLD
312pp. Viking. 14.99 [pounds sterling].
978 0 241 29386 7
Elif Shafak's new novel plunges us into the mind of "Tequila" Leila, a forty-something sex worker in 1990s Istanbul, as she lies murdered in a dumpster. Leila--who will remain conscious for another 10 minutes 38 seconds--remembers her life through a series of smells and objects. "She recalled things she did not even know she was capable of remembering, things she had believed to be lost for ever." The tang of salt evokes her birth; her mother is her father's second wife, but it is his first wife who will raise her. The memory of a pink hula hoop stands for adolescent rebellion against her conservative family; a bracelet for a much-loved brother with Down's syndrome; a watermelon for the summer her uncle began to sexually abuse her. The chapters unfold chronologically, taking us through her life as the clock ticks down to her death.
When Leila runs away to Istanbul to work in a brothel, we are introduced to five fellow social outcasts: "Nostalgia" Nalan (a trans sex worker), Zaynab 122 (a Lebanese dwarf), "Hollywood" Humeyra (a depressed nightclub singer), "Sabotage" Sinan (a timid man infatuated with Leila) and Jameelah, who has been trafficked from Somalia. The six forge a solidarity of the oppressed. Turkey's turbulent social history provides an enriching backdrop. Leila has a happy but tragically brief marriage to an idealistic young revolutionary. She witnesses discrimination against Yazidis in her eastern home town; the Taksim Square massacre of May 1, 1977; and the rise of the neoliberal Islamic rich.
After Leila's narrative reaches full circle with her murder, the perspective switches to that of her five friends. They are devastated to learn that Leila has been buried in an unmarked grave, and proceed to dig her up in the middle of the night. The scene is somewhat farcical and not necessarily in a good way. Likewise, Shafak's highly figurative language ("maybe she was only a half-broken horse") will divide readers. But the author should be commended for her unflinching confrontation of a range of themes that will resonate well beyond contemporary Turkey: victim blaming, the policing of women's behaviour, stigma surrounding disability, and violence against sex workers. Above all, Elif Shafak shows how Turkey's diversity, long feared and denied by its powerful, lives on in the personal histories of its migrant multitudes in "old. manic" Istanbul.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 NI Syndication Limited
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/
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Jilani, Sarah. "10 MINUTES 38 SECONDS IN THIS STRANGE WORLD." TLS. Times Literary Supplement, no. 6073-6074, 23 Aug. 2019, p. 41. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A632057931/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5157f494. Accessed 27 Aug. 2024.
Elif Shafak. The Architect's Apprentice. London / New York. Viking. 2014/2015. ISBN 9780241004920 / 978052542971
The best historical novels impose familiar tensions upon unfamiliar locales and eras, making place and time come alive with accurate details and bold imagination. Elif Shafak excels in this alchemy with her latest novel, The Architect's Apprentice, which explores how living a duplicitous life has profound effects on both the deceiver and the deceived.
The Architect's Apprentice takes place in and around the sixteenth-century court of the Turkish sultanate, and the writing is rich with the magical, sensory world of Istanbul court life, where sport is made of acquiring the rarest and most extravagant items from East and West. Among these acquisitions are exotic animals for the sultans menagerie, the latest of which is Chota, a white elephant attended by Jahan, the novel's protagonist who also serves as one of four apprentices to the chief royal architect.
Like slowly smoldering incense, the influence of the Thousand and One Nights infuses this novel. Jahan, like Scheherazade, sustains the attentions of his beloved by regaling her with exotic tales that keep her returning for more. And sprinkled throughout the novel are side stories of murder, hubris, love, and avarice replete with colorful characters from far-flung parts of the globe, any number of which would be at home within the pages of the Nights.
As with other of her more recent works, Shafak wrote The Architect's Apprentice in English rather than Turkish, and the writing is stylish and charming, such as this description of Jahan's first impression of Istanbul: "Denying herself at every step, changing disposition in each quarter, caring and callous at once, Istanbul gave generously and, with the same breath, recalled her gift. A city so vast she expanded left and right, and up towards the firmament, striving to ascend, desiring more, never satisfied." Shafak's language flows with an enjoyable and elegant confidence disturbed only by a noticeable overuse of opposites and lists, which after a time can leave the impression that there is no observation or feeling that also does not contain its contradiction; no item that exists in isolation.
The mysteries that give momentum to The Architect's Apprentice arise as a consequence of the double lives of the novel's principal characters. It is their conceit that promoting a false self will advance their separate purposes--a conceit that is older than the sixteenth century and still relevant in our Instagram age.
Lori Feathers
Dallas, Texas
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 University of Oklahoma
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com
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Feathers, Lori. "Elif Shafak. The Architect's Apprentice." World Literature Today, vol. 89, no. 2, Mar.-Apr. 2015, pp. 62+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A419151804/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=da683725. Accessed 27 Aug. 2024.