Elif Shafak on depression, exile and her new Flaubert novel

Elif Shafak, the Turkish-British novelist who has lived in London for 18 years, has told The Guardian that her new novel grew out of a period of depression and a crisis of faith in the value of writing. The book, In One Brief Moment All Eternity, is a fictionalised life of the French novelist Gustave Flaubert, and Shafak calls it “my love letter to literature”.

What happened

In an interview published by The Guardian, Shafak, 54, talked about the new novel, her childhood moving between countries, her legal battles in Turkey and the self-doubt that comes with every book. She spoke to the paper over coffee in west London, where she lives with her husband and their two children.

The Guardian describes the novel as stylistically inventive. It tells Flaubert’s story through a chorus of voices: his nursemaid Julie, his mother, his long-term mistress Louise Colet, his confidant George Sand, an acrobat he met as a boy, a camel called Jamilah and Emma Bovary herself. Kuchuck Hanem, an Egyptian dancer and courtesan whom Flaubert met on his travels in the Middle East, also has a voice. Shafak told the paper she wanted to suggest that this woman, who gets only passing mentions in biographies, may have inspired Madame Bovary. Opium, syphilis and Istanbul each get chapters of their own.

Shafak said the book began in “a very personal place”, during a time of depression and anxiety. She called our own era “The age of three As: Angst, Anger and AI”, and said she found herself asking whether there is “any value in writing a short story, a poem, a novel in a time of crisis and chaos”. That question took her back to the 19th century and to Flaubert, who spent most of his life working in obscurity and was treated by his family as a failure. She said she wanted to bring the European canon of the novel together with the Middle Eastern oral tradition of storytelling, with its stories nested inside stories.

The interview also covers the parallels Shafak sees between herself and Flaubert. Both had their work put on trial. Madame Bovary faced obscenity charges in 1857. In 2006 Shafak was tried over The Bastard of Istanbul for “the public denigration” of Turkishness, after writing about the Armenian genocide. She was acquitted, but had to live with a bodyguard for a year and a half. In 2019 Turkish authorities investigated three more of her novels for “crimes of obscenity”. She told The Guardian she has not been back to Turkey for 11 years. “London became home,” she said. “And I now feel rooted here.”

Why it matters if you live in United Kingdom

Shafak has an unusually large readership in Britain. The Guardian reports that There Are Rivers in the Sky, her previous novel, was one of the UK’s bestselling literary novels last year. The Island of Missing Trees, set partly in contemporary London, was shortlisted for the Women’s prize in 2022. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2019. Last December she was elected president of the Royal Society of Literature, which gives her a leading role in British literary life.

Many international readers will recognise parts of her story. In the interview she describes herself as having first “migrated into the English language and then into the UK”, and her children have grown up speaking English. She calls herself an introvert but says she is surprised by how much she loves literary festivals, and The Guardian reports long queues of readers “of all ages and nationalities” at her signings. She has also found a new, younger audience on BookTok.

The interview does not give publication details or event dates for the new novel. If you want to see her in person, keep an eye on listings for UK literary festivals and bookshop events, which is where The Guardian says she regularly appears.

What to watch next

The main thing to watch is how British readers and critics receive In One Brief Moment All Eternity. It is a very different kind of book from the eco-historical sweep of There Are Rivers in the Sky. Shafak admitted to The Guardian that every time she starts a book she promises herself to keep it minimalist, and never manages it.

Her role at the Royal Society of Literature is also worth following, especially given her view, as reported by The Guardian, that women need a voice in public life. Her questions about creativity at a time of war, climate crisis and technological uncertainty, including AI, are likely to come up whenever she speaks publicly about the book.

Shafak also made clear that finishing a novel does not bring her relief. “I feel a sense of loss,” she told the paper, explaining that she finds it hard to let go of her characters. Readers who follow her work closely will want to know where her restless imagination goes next.

Source: The Guardian