Elif Shafak
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 28 May 2017
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the Turkish writer Elif Shafak.
Elif Shafak has published ten novels and several volumes of non-fiction and her work is translated into 47 languages. She is the most widely read female novelist in Turkey today.
Born in 1971, she was raised by a single working mother and also, for the first ten years of her life, by her grandmother in Ankara. Her mother's job as a diplomat led to a move to Madrid when Elif was ten years old - and so began a peripatetic life which has taken her to places as diverse as Jordan and Germany, the United States and finally to London where she has lived for the past seven years.
Elif wrote her first novels in Turkish, but began writing in English shortly after the start of the new millennium. English, she says, has given her a new freedom to write about sensitive issues in Turkey. Her books draw on diverse cultures and reflect her interest in history, philosophy, spiritualism and Sufism. One commentator has said of her work: "Stepping into the writing of this Turkish-born author for the first time is like breaking through the back of a children's wardrobe and walking into a whole new multicultural world of lives and histories - and, above all, fabulous stories."
She is a regular columnist both for English as well as Turkish papers and also writes lyrics for rock musicians.
Producer: Sarah Taylor.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:04.0 | Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. |
| 0:06.0 | Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island discs from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:10.0 | For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the Radio broadcast. |
| 0:14.0 | For more information about the program, please visit bbc.co.uk- Radio 4. |
| 0:30.0 | Music |
| 0:44.0 | My castaway this week is the Turkish writer Elif Shefak. |
| 0:48.0 | What she describes as an almost existential need for words and books has led to her becoming the most popular female novelist in her homeland today. |
| 0:58.0 | But her work has relevance and appeal well beyond the borders of her breast place. |
| 1:02.0 | It's been translated into 47 languages. She writes nonfiction and song lyrics too. |
| 1:08.0 | The storytelling started early in the little turquoise notebook she was given as an age-old. |
| 1:14.0 | It was a child who dominated not just by words but by place, |
| 1:18.0 | Jordan, Germany and Spain were just some of the countries as a child, she called home. |
| 1:24.0 | She says to be human means to embody at least several conflicting and co-existing selves within. |
| 1:30.0 | It is the job of the novelist to peel off those layers and show the heart that beats underneath. |
| 1:36.0 | I want to show the east within the west and the west within the east. |
| 1:40.0 | I believe that as human beings we can have multiple belongings and so welcome Elif. |
| 1:46.0 | At this particular point then I would say in human history where identity and migration and notions of culture and belonging seem to be at the very forefront of social and political change. |
| 1:58.0 | How much do you think identity is more than ever a very big struggle for us to try to get our heads around? |
| 2:08.0 | Identity is a massive struggle and it's amazing that it has not lost its importance just to opposite maybe. |
| 2:14.0 | It made a very strong comeback. |
| 2:18.0 | I come from a country that is turquoise that is very much confused about its identity. |
... |
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