Rebel With A Cause

Writer and political scientist ELIF SHAFAK is the most widely read woman novelist from Turkey. She speaks to SHAHNAZ SIGANPORIA about combating self-censorship and writing in an age of fading democracies

- Shahnaz Siganporia

Elif Shafak was raised by two women—her single mother, a well-educated secular diplomat who was ahead of her time, and her more traditional grandmother, who was grounded in her culture and read the future in coffee beans. She hopped around with her mother, growing up in a score of countries, and dreamed of becoming a sailor in Madrid. (It later dawned that she was the “representative foreigner” in Arizona.)

The perpetual new-girl-in-town, Shafak was a lonely child but soon found respite in her one constant—her imagination and the short stories she began writing at the age of eight. With her matrilineal heritage in tow, Shafak’s writing is rooted in reality but laced with magic realism, and her books explore the complex pluralities of identity, language and womanhood. She has published 15 books (including the bestselling The Bastard Of Istanbul and Forty Rules Of Love), been prosecuted for her writing in 2006, awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2010 and is on the judging panel for the Man Booker International Prize 2017. The now 45-year-old multi-hyphenate and mother-of-two is also a women’s, minority and LGBT rights advocate, and now divides her time between Istanbul and London.