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4 interviews · 11 quotes
In conversation
Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist, and the most widely read female author in Turkey. She has published seventeen books, eleven of which are novels, and has had her work translated…
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From the archive
What novels do is to turn the tide and restore our individuality. The writer is alone when s/he is writing, the reader is alone when s/he is reading. This bond is precious.
— Elif ShafakTurkish-British novelist and author of "The Forty Rules of Love
They help us to understand that there is no 'us' versus 'them', and that 'The Other' is, in fact, my brother, my sister; the other is me.
— Elif ShafakTurkish-British novelist and author of "The Forty Rules of Love
Stories help us to develop cognitive flexibility, strengthen our epistemic muscles. It is an intellectual growth but also a spiritual one. It changes us deep inside. Stories rehumanize those who have been dehumanized.
— Elif ShafakTurkish-British novelist and author of "The Forty Rules of Love
What politics couldn't say and left silent, fiction could tell. Literature takes us out of our comfort zones and pushes us to see the issues from various angles. Fiction is an intellectual exercise.
— Elif ShafakTurkish-British novelist and author of "The Forty Rules of Love
There is no such thing as History with a capital H. There are histories, multiple stories waiting to be told, researched, understood and appreciated. The story changes depending on who tells it.
— Elif ShafakTurkish-British novelist and author of "The Forty Rules of Love
I started writing fiction because I was lonely. I was an only child, a solitary child, raised by a single working mother, which was very unusual at the time in Turkey. Literature gave me a sense of continuity, coherence; it kept my pieces together. It helped me to connect even when I felt like I didn't quite belong.
— Elif ShafakTurkish-British novelist and author of "The Forty Rules of Love
I have way too often felt like 'the other.' Even in my motherland, I did not quite fit in. I never did. This is partly because I was born in France, Strasbourg. After my parents separated, my father stayed in France and remarried.
— Elif ShafakTurkish-British novelist and author of "The Forty Rules of Love
I am a nomad—intellectually, physically, spiritually. A commuter, in the words of James Baldwin. This state of continuous exile is one that I find difficult to explain to other people but it's who I am.
— Elif ShafakTurkish-British novelist and author of "The Forty Rules of Love
When I say books can save us; books can be our dear friends, our amazing teachers, our loyal companions of the road, I really mean it, because it happened to me.
— Elif ShafakTurkish-British novelist and author of "The Forty Rules of Love
To me literature was, and still is, an existential need. Books and stories have been that gateway for me. I wanted to find a gate to an 'elsewhere', to another land, a Storyland.
— Elif ShafakTurkish-British novelist and author of "The Forty Rules of Love
I started writing fiction because I was lonely. I was an only child, a solitary child, raised by a single working mother, which was very unusual at the time in Turkey. Literature gave me a sense of continuity, coherence; it kept my pieces together. It helped me to connect even when I felt like I didn't quite belong.
— Elif ShafakTurkish-British novelist and author of "The Forty Rules of Love
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