Elif Shafak Interview, plus links to author biography, book summaries, excerpts and reviews

An interview with Elif Shafak

Michelle Johnson, Managing and Culture Editor for World Literature Today, interviews Elif Shafak about her novel, There Are Rivers in the Sky

When the novel opens, we get a peek into King Ashurbanipal's library. He will someday be remembered as "The Librarian King" and "The Educated Monarch," yet he is brutally cruel. The cruel headmaster in Arthur's school, too, is surrounded by books. Some people believe that reading develops empathy, but that isn't so with either of these men. What is your view of the relationship between reading and empathy?

I do believe that reading, especially reading fiction, develops empathy, connectivity, and understanding. I know this because it happened to me. Books have changed me profoundly. Ever since my childhood, they have shown me the possibility of other worlds, other existences, connecting me with lives beyond my tiny little corner of the universe. However, it is also true that education alone does not automatically make one wiser or kinder. My grandmother, the woman who raised me until I was ten years old, was not a well-educated woman, only because she had been pulled out of school in Turkey at a young age; just for being a girl she had been denied a proper education. Yet she wholeheartedly believed in women's independence. Grandma was one of the wisest people I have ever met throughout my life. She showed me how there are multiple paths to knowledge and wisdom, and inside oral culture, there are wells of wisdom that need to be studied and appreciated.

The controversial Ilısu Dam project, in Turkey, figures prominently in the story, which is closely connected to rivers and water in its various forms. The Epic of Gilgamesh, also at the center of the novel, includes a great flood. Do our oldest stories inform our current crises?

The Ilısu Dam has catastrophic consequences for the environment. The dam has a lifespan of only fifty years, and yet, in order to build it, thousands of years of historical heritage and valuable natural habitat have all been destroyed, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced. Today the area is inundated, history gone. All around the world, when we talk about climate crisis, we are mainly talking about water crisis. This affects the lives of women and minorities in a very deep way. Women are water-carriers, just like they are memory-bearers. When rivers dry up downstream, for instance, and there is no water for entire communities, women have to walk longer distances, increasing the danger of gender violence.

We have to connect all these dots. If we care about environmental crisis we care about gender inequality; if we care about gender inequality we care about racial and regional inequalities; and so on. They are all inseparably connected. The land where I come from experiences the lack of water acutely. Out of the ten most water stressed nations in the world, seven are in the Middle East and North Africa. The Epic of Gilgamesh, told and written thousands of years ago, is deeply relevant to our world. The old story has a lot to tell us, if we care to listen. It does tell about crisis and loss and destruction but also about resilience, hope, renewal.

In The Buried Book, David Damrosch describes The Epic of Gilgamesh as "the first great masterpiece of world literature." How do you define "world literature"? What are a few of your favorite examples?

I so agree with Professor Damrosch. The Epic of Gilgamesh is the earliest universal story with an enduring impact that transcends borders of time and place. That is what great works of literature do—they transcend and transform. Don Quixote de la Mancha, for instance. The Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer. Dante's The Divine Comedy. In Search of Lost Time, by Proust ... and so many others have that same universal and timeless core.

Arthur has lexical-gustatory synesthesia: he tastes words. I'd heard of the form of synesthesia where people associate colors with letters, but LG synesthesia was new to me. How did it find its way into your work?

I have a very mild form of synesthesia, something that took me years to understand. I have always been puzzled by the taste of words on my tongue. Not only in my native language, Turkish, but also in Spanish and English, both of which are, for me, acquired languages. Does our perception of words change as we move from one language to another? Are we slightly different people in different languages? All these questions intrigue me immensely, not only as an intellectual subject but also for purely personal and emotional reasons of belonging and nonbelonging.

I was stunned when I read in a Guardian article that you listen to heavy metal music while writing (I work in silence). Which bands are on your writing playlist, and why do you suppose heavy metal provides the best writing backdrop for you?

I cannot write in silence, I get panic attacks. In a very tidy, pristine, and completely silent room, I can't even think properly. I love the sounds of the city, the sounds of nature. And I love music. I put on my headphones and listen to the same song seventy or eighty times, over and again. I enter into a loop of energy, which helps me focus better on my writing. Since my early youth I have been a metalhead. I love multiple subgenres of heavy metal: gothic, progressive metal, melodic death metal, industrial, symphonic, or power metal... . I have written many stories listening to System of a Down in the past, for instance. I was heartbroken when they broke up.

I listen to all kinds of bands from all over the world, from the US to Ukraine to Mongolia, but especially I love Scandinavian bands. Just to name a few from my playlist: Lorna Shore, Archenemy, Sleep Token, Amon Amarth, In Flames, Wintersun, Jinjer... . Heavy metal has so much energy, fire, passion, and honesty. It is about raw emotions. It can bring contrasts together in remarkable harmony. Some people assume that this music makes one aggressive, but in reality, when you look at heavy metal musicians, many of them are kind, gentle souls.

Book bans are on the rise in the US—particularly in schools and libraries. What can we in the US learn from Turkey about the ascent of censorship?

I find the rapid acceleration of book bans and book removals across the US very alarming and important. This not only an attack on writers and poets, not only an attack on libraries and literary spaces, but also an attack on our freedom to connect with knowledge, imagination, empathy, and ultimately, humanity. It has consequences for an entire culture and society. It undermines democracy. In this sense, the US can learn from Turkey.

I wrote a novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, that told the story of a Turkish family and an Armenian American family through the eyes of generations of women. My book focused on the silences buried in history and mentioned the Armenian Genocide. When the novel came out, I was accused of "insulting Turkishness" by the authorities, called a "traitor" by ultranationalists, and put on trial alongside my fictional characters. The prosecutor demanded three years in prison for me. Another time, I have been investigated for the "crime of obscenity" because in one of my novels, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (WLT, Winter 2020, 76), I wrote about a sex worker in Istanbul, and in another novel, The Gaze, I wrote about gender violence and child abuse. Police officers have come to my Turkish publishing house and taken my books to yet another prosecutor's office and so on. I have experienced several times the dangers of authoritarian intervention into literature, libraries, and book spaces.

Knowledge-censorship and empathy-censorship will only deepen the polarization of our societies, the breakdown of democratic norms, and the erosion of coexistence. In a world torn apart by walls of apathy, literature is a bridge-builder.

What cultural offerings or trends have recently captured your attention?

I have recently joined Substack, which is, of course well known in the US but not so much on this side of the Atlantic. Today many social media platforms are all about either anger and division or polished/edited/perfect photos, whereas on Substack it is possible to share essays about ideas, literature, the craft of writing, the art of storytelling. My newsletter Unmapped Storylands is free for the most part, and I appreciate the literary community around it, the relationship with both readers and fellow authors.

What have you recently read that you would recommend to our readers?

I have read The Vulnerables, by Sigrid Nunez. It is utterly brilliant, beguiling. I will now start reading 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem, by Nam Le. I am intrigued by the way he deals with identity, belonging, roots.

The news can be quite overwhelming, and, as your brilliant novel reminds us, this is nothing new. On the darkest days, what picks you up?

We all feel anxious, depressed, angry, frustrated ... an almost existential fatigue. This is the Age of Angst, but if we were to tumble into the Age of Apathy, I think it'd be a much darker world. We need to hear each other's voices in these liquid times. I think global solidarity is so important, as is global sisterhood. We need to connect with three things: with our fellow human beings, with ourselves (the inner garden), and with the environment and ecosystem. Seemingly small things can make a huge difference. A walk by the river, acts of kindness and compassion, pockets of love... .

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Elif Shafak, author of The Bastard of Istanbul, discusses her childhood, growing up in different parts of Europe, her adult years spent between Turkey and the US, the insights she has gained from the various cultures, and how it has affected her writing. (3/1/2007):

A Conversation with Elif Shafak

Where were you born, and when and how did you come to live in America?
I was born in France, Strasbourg, in 1971. All throughout my childhood and youth I have lived in different cities and countries, including Madrid, Spain; Amman, Jordan; and Cologne, Germany. Then in my thirties I came to the United States, first to Boston, then Michigan and Arizona. I am not an immigrant. I guess all my life I have been a nomad, a commuter.

You divide your time between Istanbul, Turkey, and Tucson, Arizona. What do you think is the most striking contrast between the two cities? What do you think they have most in common?
I have always danced around this question, and I think I’m going to continue dancing around it now. Like Miles, I grew up in Florida and attended a boarding school in Alabama. And the physical setting of Alaska is very, very similar to the physical place I attended boarding school. Generally, the book is probably more autobiographical than I usually acknowledge. But it is very much a work of fiction. The facts, I can assure you, were ignored.

Right now I divide my time between these two cities and the contrast couldn’t be deeper. Tucson when compared to Istanbul is quiet, sterile, and ordered. But it is the desert that fascinated me as I learned to live with her around. The desert and Tucson are calm whereas Istanbul is anything but. She is a restless city of more than 10 million. When the pace of the latter is tiring I feel a need to escape to the former. But when the peace and quiet of the former suffocates, I feel a need to come back to Istanbul. I guess I need both.

Your novel gives readers insight into both the Turkish and Armenian cultures and some of their respective problems. What personal experiences led you to portray these two peoples in the way that you have?
I am the child of a Turkish diplomat. I was raised by a single mother, and she became a diplomat around the time I was ten or eleven. And when we were in Madrid, Spain, Armenian terrorists were killing Turkish diplomats. My first acquaintance with Armenian identity is very negative. There is no way terrorism can be legitimized or approved. But that said, in time as I kept reading, thinking, and collecting stories of real people, as a writer and intellectual my pursuits brought me to a point where I had to face the tragic events of 1915 and rethink the whole past.

How did you come up with the book’s unusual structure?
I’d been working on the book with very limited success for about 18 months before September 11, 2001. And then in the days after 9/11, I was alone in my apartment in Chicago watching the commercial-free news 24 hours a day. On TV, people kept saying that this was a defining moment for my generation of Americans, that we would all remember the world in terms of before 9/11 and after it. And I thought about how time is usually measured that way: Christians date from before and after the birth of Christ. Muslims date from before and after the hijrah. We look back to the most important moment in our history, and that becomes the dividing line between what we were and what we are now. So I wanted to reflect on the way we measure and think of time. And also, for the characters in Alaska, there is a moment that changes their lives forever, and that redefines their understanding of the world. I wanted the importance of that moment to be central to the novel’s structure.

The Kazanci and Tchakhmakhchian families really come to life in this novel. Which of these characters, and their relationships with each other, were inspired by your own family?
I grew up without seeing my father and all my life he has been absent. In that sense there are similarities. The title that I wanted to give the novel at the beginning was “Baba and the Bastard”—baba meaning father in Turkish. I wanted to deal with the absence of the father. Also, as a child I was surrounded by women: grandmother, aunts, neighbors ... ordinary and sometimes ignorant but definitely strong willed and beautiful souls they were. All of those have been reflected in the book. And the Tchakhmakhchian family has been inspired by my Armenian friends in America and Turkey. While I was writing this novel I had a chance to talk to many Armenian women. They opened the doors of their homes to me and I am grateful to them for sharing their stories with me.

Though American pop culture references are sprinkled throughout the novel, you chose Johnny Cash as Asya’s sole musical interest. Why?
First of all because I love Johnny Cash myself. Music has always been a very central ingredient in my fiction, not only in terms of pop culture or alternative music genres (which I am very interested in), but also in the sense that when I write fiction it is to me a matter of rhythm, of music. And in all my novels music plays an important role. I think every story brings its own music along, and then, when the reader starts to read the book, she too hears it.

Your female characters appear in many different lights in the novel: as Muslims, members of a secular state, foreign exiles, social outcasts, Americans brought into foreign families, sisters, daughters, wives, lovers, and friends. What statement do you feel The Bastard of Istanbul makes about women’s roles both past and present?
This is a book in which women play the central role, both Armenian and Turkish women. I believe women’s relation to the past is quite different than men’s. My country is a country of collective amnesia. Yet, if we still have some memory of the past, we owe it to women. Women pass their heritage from one generation to another, through recipes, songs, lullabies, and stories. These are all ordinary but precious gems of daily life. While I was writing this novel I did not deal with big macro-political questions. Just the opposite: I probed the simple and basic ingredients in the everyday life of Armenian and Turkish women. And they have so much in common.

You write in both Turkish and English. What prompted you to write The Bastard of Istanbul in English? How does the process differ for you when writing in each language? Do you find that you are writing for different audiences or just using different vocabularies?
Every language has its own labyrinth, its own rhythm. As a writer it fascinates me to discover that. It is a big challenge, not only a linguistic challenge, but also an existential one. In another language you have to rediscover your literary voice, start from scratch again. But despite the difficulties involved I enjoy commuting between languages because I am fascinated with language in the most abstract sense. Just like a Jewish mystic or a Hurufi, an Islamic mystic in love with letters, I do not see language as an instrument and myself outside or above it. Rather, I see language as a new continent and want to explore its meadows, precipices, mountains, and landscape. A new language gives you a new zone of existence. You become a different person as you switch from one language to another. I know many Turkish women who were raised bilingual cannot possibly utter any bad words in Turkish, because it is not proper for women to use that kind of language in this culture. But when I hear them speak English, I notice they do swear freely, without reservations, as if it is OK to swear in English but not in Turkish. I observe these linguistic journeys.

How have the Turkish and American literary worlds each received your work? What aspects of being a Turkish author and an American author do you most enjoy? Which aspects do you find most difficult?
There are differences. I am a well-known writer in Turkey. I was somebody in Turkey when I came to the United States four years ago. Then in a day I became a nobody. If you are a painter you can take your paintings with you when you move from one country to another. You can take your music with you if you are a musician, or your documentaries if you are a documentary maker. But when you are a novelist and you have almost nothing translated into English yet (at that point I didn’t), you literally become a nobody in a day. And I liked that. I was so famous in Turkey, a country in which the novelists are always in the public eye, it both frightened and fascinated me to become nobody and start from there again, this time writing in English. The two countries are so different. In Turkey the literary world is deeply politicized. A novelist is a public figure. It is a writer-oriented framework. We concentrate on the persona of the writer but not so much on her writing. In the United States it is more writing oriented and I like that.

Your love for Istanbul shines through the pages of this novel. You do not spend as much time depicting your other home, Tucson. What other American cities have you spent time in? Do any of them come to life for you the way Istanbul does?
While giving readings and talks at different universities or bookstores, I had the chance to travel to many places in the United States. I lived a year in Boston, then in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and then moved down south after an offer from the University of Arizona. I love traveling in the United States and seeing the different layers in this country, both in terms of landscape and people. I am fascinated with New York, and in many ways I do see similarities between New York and Istanbul. I think New York is closer to Istanbul than to Arizona or the Midwest.

Your character Baron Baghdassarian delivers an indictment: “Just like the Turks have been in the habit of denying their wrongdoing, the Armenians have been in the habit of savoring the cocoon of victimhood” (p. 263). What fresh perspectives on the past and present do you hope Armenian and Turkish readers will find among the pages of this novel? What would you most like American readers to understand about these communities?
I think we Turks need to overcome our amnesia and build a sense of continuity in time. Being so future oriented has made us very dynamic, and yet at the same time we could not mature because you cannot mature, either as a society or individual, without coming to grips with your past. That said, I think Armenians in the diaspora can be too past oriented and memory driven. When I meet a young Armenian, like eighteen or nineteen years old, I meet someone with a very old memory, the memory of her grandmother. But being too past-oriented can blur someone’s vision. Eventually, I wish we Turks could remember, and Armenians could forget.

What books and writers have been particularly influential in your life?
So many ... I have always had a very eclectic reading list. Russian literature, particularly Dostoyevsky, gloomy voices in European literature, such as Michel Tournier, Henry Mulisch, and of course Virginia Woolf. And then multiple voices in American literature, such as Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Auster, Toni Morrison ... To this endless list I must add my interest in Sufism. I also read extensively on Jewish and Islamic mysticism. As a political scientist, books on political philosophy too are an inspiration for me, particularly Spinoza and Deleuze.

What are you working on now?
Right now I am working on my baby, as I just had a daughter. At the same time I am working on a script on honor killings. I want to use the most popular agency, that is to say, the TV, to question and confront sexism and honor killings.

Unless otherwise stated, this interview was conducted at the time the book was first published, and is reproduced with permission of the publisher. This interview may not be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the copyright holder.