‘Is there any value in writing a story in a time of chaos?’: novelist Elif Shafak on her creative crisis

The author talks about her nomadic childhood, being targeted by the Turkish government and overcoming depression to write her latest novel

For a long time Elif Shafak was referred to as Turkey’s “most widely read female author”. Today, she is surely simply its best loved. Orhan Pamuk may have won the Nobel prize in literature, but it is Shafak whose novels are fervently passed among readers. There Are Rivers in the Sky, which follows a single raindrop from ancient Nineveh to the River Tigris in 2018, was one of the UK’s bestselling literary novels last year. The Island of Missing Trees, a love story set in post-colonial Cyprus and contemporary London, was shortlisted for the Women’s prize in 2022, and 10 Minutes 38 seconds in This Strange World, narrated by a murdered sex worker in Istanbul, was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2019. Last December she was elected president of the Royal Society of Literature. It would be tempting to say she is on a roll, but Shafak’s reputation and readership have been steadily growing for more than 20 years and spanning as many books, of which 14 are novels.

In a 2017 Ted Talk, which has been viewed more than 6.4m times, she describes herself as an Istanbulite, “a European by birth and by choice” and a Londoner for many years. “I like to think of myself as a global soul, as a world citizen, a nomad and an itinerant storyteller.” Her novels sweep confidently across centuries and continents, taking in politics, history, feminism and ecology, typically with a dash of magic realism or mysticism.

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