Elif Shafak, the most widely read novelist in Turkey, was in advocatory mood at Oxford Literary Festival last Saturday. Lamenting the demise of the kind of oral tradition former generations once extolled in Turkey, she illustrated some of the ways in which language in a written culture can be used to address barriers. Above all, and in whatever form, ‘we need stories’, she explained.
The curiously nomadic Dr. Shafak was born to Turkish parents, raised by her mother (a diplomat) and grandmother, and only acquired English after moving from her birthplace in Strasbourg to Madrid as a child. Today she speaks with such acuity in English about so many topics (she’s a political scientist by training) that it’s hard to believe she still feels her mind running faster than her tongue. But that gap, she explained, has always fed her inspiration.
Many of her books are written in English.
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