Elif Shafak

Elif Shafak is a British-Turkish novelist, political scientist and commentator. The most widely read female author in Turkey, her novels have been translated into over 50 languages worldwide. Shafak’s fiction is both steeped in Anatolian culture and profoundly modern in its questioning of tradition and orthodoxy. She has been praised for marrying mysticism and myth with contemporary issues around gender and identity, a result of her academic expertise in Political Science and Gender Studies.

Shafak’s breakthrough came in 2006 when The Bastard of Istanbul was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Women’s Fiction; seven years later Honour was shortlisted for the same award. Her other novels include The Forty Rules of Love and The Architect’s Apprentice, whilst her book 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, was described by the Financial Times as ‘a novel that gives voice to the invisible, the untouchable, the abused and the damaged, weaving their painful songs into a thing of beauty.’