Tweet
ELIF SHAFAK: 'FEAR IS A VERY DANGEROUS THING'
The voice of Turkish literature - tells Joy Lo Dico why Istanbul
needs to make another great leap
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/elif-shafak-fe
ar-is-a-very-dangerous-thing-8571991.html?origin=internalSearch JOY
LO DICO SATURDAY 13 APRIL 2013
When I invited Elif Shafak to lunch at Julie's, a smart London
restaurant tucked between the Victorian town houses of Holland Park,
I hadn't considered the decor. Carved wooden panels, rugs and leather
stools: it looked like someone had made a quick raid on the Ottoman
Empire to furnish it. Would Shafak, who is from Istanbul, roll her
eyes at the cliche of inviting her to a faux oriental den? She looks
around. "How lovely," she says, a little coolly.
Dressed head to toe in black (she claims that this is the only colour
in her wardrobe) and with the looks of a French film star, Shafak is
an easy choice to be the face for the London Book Fair, the special
focus of which this year is Turkish literature. Her 2006 novel The
Bastard of Istanbul was long-listed for the Orange Prize. She followed
it with a retelling of the life of the 13th-century poet Rumi folded
into the life of a bored Jewish-American housewife, in The Forty
Rules of Love. And last year she published Honour, the story of an
"honour" killing by a Turkish Kurdish family living between their
home country and Dalston.
That diversity comes from her own internationalism. Born in
Strasbourg, she's lived across Europe and America and now divides
her time between Istanbul, where her husband is editor-in-chief of
a newspaper, and London.
"It's like a compass," she explains. "One leg of the drawing compass
is fixed in one spot. For me that is Istanbul. The other leg draws
a huge, wide circle around this one and I see myself as global soul,
as a world citizen."
Shafak's writing is not high literature in the Nobel Prize-winning
Orhan Pamuk vein: the prose is open, the pages turn easily, plots
sometimes twist too conveniently and The Forty Rules of Love's
spirituality brings to mind Paulo Coelho. But Shafak has big ideas -
about women's rights, identity, freedom of expression - that really
challenge readers, and her novels work hard at bringing out unheard
voices.
It's reflected in her readership. The queues at her book signings,
Shafak notes proudly, are made up of "people who normally wouldn't
break bread together: liberals, leftists, secularists, Sufis,
conservatives; girls with headscarves but also women with mini skirts".
As we pick over the skeletons of our grilled sardines, it occurs to
me that Shafak makes waves with wide-selling literature - so popular
that her books are pirated in Turkey - but that the forms and ideas are
not so radical to Britons - an exception perhaps is her exploration of
"honour" killings. Her real strength lies in her eloquence on politics
and culture, she writes columns on both for the newspaper Haberturk.
It is 90 years since Kemal Ataturk declared Turkey a republic, and
this past decade has seen it walking tall despite "being left in the
waiting room", as Shafak says, by the EU. The steady government of
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, economic growth, a grown-up regional policy and,
as of last month, a ceasefire with the PKK (the Kurdish nationalist
movement fighting for independence for the past 30 years), has returned
Turkey as a significant player to the world stage.
Shafak welcomes reconciliation with the Kurds but is already thinking
one step ahead: about changing the nature of modern Turkey. "What
we need is a new constitution which is more embracing, not only
of Turks and Kurds but also the minorities in Turkey who are not
feeling comfortable: Armenians, Jews, Azeris, gypsies, and others," she
suggests, seeing this as a time when Turkey could reconstruct its whole
self-image. "Our 600-year-old empire was multi-ethnic, multi-lingual,
multi-religious, amazingly cosmopolitan. In 1923, the nation state
was established and, throughout the republican era, the main discourse
was that we are a society of undifferentiated individuals. No classes,
no ethnicities. Seeing difference as the source of danger and looking
for enemies within created a lot of fear in Turkey, and fear is a very
dangerous thing because it produces authoritarian responses. I'm not
saying Ataturk's Turkey should be abandoned: I'm saying we need to
take a step forward and have a far more egalitarian and democratic
society. What I find frightening is top-down uniformity."
The blooming of identities she talks of - she includes homosexuals and
transsexuals - echoes the voices in her books. But Shafak, remembering
how quickly her comments have been twisted in parts of the Turkish
media, chooses her words carefully. In 2006, after writing about the
Armenian genocide, an ultra-nationalist group had her put on trial
under an archaic law for "insulting Turkishness".
The Turkish Ministry of Justice now intervenes to prevent such trials
but the law remains. Shafak drives it home with a British analogy.
"The other day I was thinking, when Hilary Mantel was 'criticising'
Kate Middleton, that there was a discussion in the UK media," she
says. "Everyone was asking, 'Is she right or wrong?' But as a Turkish
writer, my main interest was not who was right or wrong but that this
debate can be heard freely."
We move on to the mint tea and Shafak points out that Britain and
Turkey, both of which she calls home, have taken different routes
out of empire. London remains a global crossroads but Istanbul risks
forgetting the way porous boundaries helped it thrive. It is the
subject of her next novel, which will be set in the 16th century.
Shafak will be taking part in a series of seminars and talks at
the London Book Fair next Tuesday, along with other big hitters in
the Turkish literary scene, including Perihan Magden, Ayse Kulin and
Ahmet Umit. Shafak knows how to pitch to a bigger audience than just
those who want to dabble in the Orient: "The conversations we are
having about identity, amnesia, past and future don't concern solely
the society in Turkey but they resonate through the Muslim world,
and the world in general."
Honour by Elif Shafak
Penguin, £7.99
'It was all because women were made of the lightest cambric, Naze
continued, whereas men were cut of thick, dark fabric. That is how
God had tailored the two: one superior to the other. As to why He
had done that, it wasn't up to human beings to question ... "
The Market Focus Cultural Programme at The London Book Fair is curated
by the British Council and begins tomorrow. For more information visit:
literature.britishcouncil.org
The voice of Turkish literature - tells Joy Lo Dico why Istanbul
needs to make another great leap
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/elif-shafak-fe
ar-is-a-very-dangerous-thing-8571991.html?origin=internalSearch JOY
LO DICO SATURDAY 13 APRIL 2013
When I invited Elif Shafak to lunch at Julie's, a smart London
restaurant tucked between the Victorian town houses of Holland Park,
I hadn't considered the decor. Carved wooden panels, rugs and leather
stools: it looked like someone had made a quick raid on the Ottoman
Empire to furnish it. Would Shafak, who is from Istanbul, roll her
eyes at the cliche of inviting her to a faux oriental den? She looks
around. "How lovely," she says, a little coolly.
Dressed head to toe in black (she claims that this is the only colour
in her wardrobe) and with the looks of a French film star, Shafak is
an easy choice to be the face for the London Book Fair, the special
focus of which this year is Turkish literature. Her 2006 novel The
Bastard of Istanbul was long-listed for the Orange Prize. She followed
it with a retelling of the life of the 13th-century poet Rumi folded
into the life of a bored Jewish-American housewife, in The Forty
Rules of Love. And last year she published Honour, the story of an
"honour" killing by a Turkish Kurdish family living between their
home country and Dalston.
That diversity comes from her own internationalism. Born in
Strasbourg, she's lived across Europe and America and now divides
her time between Istanbul, where her husband is editor-in-chief of
a newspaper, and London.
"It's like a compass," she explains. "One leg of the drawing compass
is fixed in one spot. For me that is Istanbul. The other leg draws
a huge, wide circle around this one and I see myself as global soul,
as a world citizen."
Shafak's writing is not high literature in the Nobel Prize-winning
Orhan Pamuk vein: the prose is open, the pages turn easily, plots
sometimes twist too conveniently and The Forty Rules of Love's
spirituality brings to mind Paulo Coelho. But Shafak has big ideas -
about women's rights, identity, freedom of expression - that really
challenge readers, and her novels work hard at bringing out unheard
voices.
It's reflected in her readership. The queues at her book signings,
Shafak notes proudly, are made up of "people who normally wouldn't
break bread together: liberals, leftists, secularists, Sufis,
conservatives; girls with headscarves but also women with mini skirts".
As we pick over the skeletons of our grilled sardines, it occurs to
me that Shafak makes waves with wide-selling literature - so popular
that her books are pirated in Turkey - but that the forms and ideas are
not so radical to Britons - an exception perhaps is her exploration of
"honour" killings. Her real strength lies in her eloquence on politics
and culture, she writes columns on both for the newspaper Haberturk.
It is 90 years since Kemal Ataturk declared Turkey a republic, and
this past decade has seen it walking tall despite "being left in the
waiting room", as Shafak says, by the EU. The steady government of
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, economic growth, a grown-up regional policy and,
as of last month, a ceasefire with the PKK (the Kurdish nationalist
movement fighting for independence for the past 30 years), has returned
Turkey as a significant player to the world stage.
Shafak welcomes reconciliation with the Kurds but is already thinking
one step ahead: about changing the nature of modern Turkey. "What
we need is a new constitution which is more embracing, not only
of Turks and Kurds but also the minorities in Turkey who are not
feeling comfortable: Armenians, Jews, Azeris, gypsies, and others," she
suggests, seeing this as a time when Turkey could reconstruct its whole
self-image. "Our 600-year-old empire was multi-ethnic, multi-lingual,
multi-religious, amazingly cosmopolitan. In 1923, the nation state
was established and, throughout the republican era, the main discourse
was that we are a society of undifferentiated individuals. No classes,
no ethnicities. Seeing difference as the source of danger and looking
for enemies within created a lot of fear in Turkey, and fear is a very
dangerous thing because it produces authoritarian responses. I'm not
saying Ataturk's Turkey should be abandoned: I'm saying we need to
take a step forward and have a far more egalitarian and democratic
society. What I find frightening is top-down uniformity."
The blooming of identities she talks of - she includes homosexuals and
transsexuals - echoes the voices in her books. But Shafak, remembering
how quickly her comments have been twisted in parts of the Turkish
media, chooses her words carefully. In 2006, after writing about the
Armenian genocide, an ultra-nationalist group had her put on trial
under an archaic law for "insulting Turkishness".
The Turkish Ministry of Justice now intervenes to prevent such trials
but the law remains. Shafak drives it home with a British analogy.
"The other day I was thinking, when Hilary Mantel was 'criticising'
Kate Middleton, that there was a discussion in the UK media," she
says. "Everyone was asking, 'Is she right or wrong?' But as a Turkish
writer, my main interest was not who was right or wrong but that this
debate can be heard freely."
We move on to the mint tea and Shafak points out that Britain and
Turkey, both of which she calls home, have taken different routes
out of empire. London remains a global crossroads but Istanbul risks
forgetting the way porous boundaries helped it thrive. It is the
subject of her next novel, which will be set in the 16th century.
Shafak will be taking part in a series of seminars and talks at
the London Book Fair next Tuesday, along with other big hitters in
the Turkish literary scene, including Perihan Magden, Ayse Kulin and
Ahmet Umit. Shafak knows how to pitch to a bigger audience than just
those who want to dabble in the Orient: "The conversations we are
having about identity, amnesia, past and future don't concern solely
the society in Turkey but they resonate through the Muslim world,
and the world in general."
Honour by Elif Shafak
Penguin, £7.99
'It was all because women were made of the lightest cambric, Naze
continued, whereas men were cut of thick, dark fabric. That is how
God had tailored the two: one superior to the other. As to why He
had done that, it wasn't up to human beings to question ... "
The Market Focus Cultural Programme at The London Book Fair is curated
by the British Council and begins tomorrow. For more information visit:
literature.britishcouncil.org