Skip to main content
Outdated Browser

For the best experience using our website, we recommend upgrading your browser to a newer version or switching to a supported browser.

More Information

Contributor

Elif Shafak

Contributor

Elif Shafak

Elif Shafak was born in France in 1971 and spent her childhood in Spain. After studying political science in Turkey, she went on to hold teaching positions in the United Kingdom, Turkey, and the United States. Her publications include both novels and essays, among them The Saint of Incipient Insanities, Bit Palas, Mahrem, which won the Turkish Writers' Association Best Novel of the Year Award, and Sehrin Aynalari. Her reviews have appeared in The Economist, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, and The Washington Post.

 

Her novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, was the subject of an interrogation and trial under Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which prohibits "public denigration of Turkishness." Shafak was acquitted of charges in September 2006.

Articles by Elif Shafak

Nausea
By Elif Shafak
The street where I live doesn’t know it is not yet another snaky street in Istanbul but in truth some kind of a vessel. We the fortuitous passengers keep this as a secret, divulging it to no one,…
Translated from Turkish by the author
Women Writers, Islam, and the Ghost of Zulaikha
By Elif Shafak
In the history of Islam, perhaps no woman has been as widely (mis)interpreted as Zulaikha—the beautiful and perfidious wife of Potiphar in the story of Joseph. It was she who tried to seduce Joseph…
Translated from Turkish by Elif Shafak
[class^="wpforms-"]
[class^="wpforms-"]