Elif Şafak

Elif Şafak (1971– ) was born in Strasbourg while her father, social psychologist Nuri Bilgin, was completing his doctorate. Her mother, Şafak Atayman, was a diplomat. She writes under her mother’s name, reflecting a life shaped through the maternal line.

Her parents separated early. She grew up moving between Madrid, Amman, Ankara, and İstanbul. No single city fully contains her. Movement becomes structure rather than background.

She studied international relations at Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ), completed a master’s degree in women’s studies, and went on to a doctorate in political science. She later taught in Turkey, the United States, and at the University of Oxford. Her writing consistently moves toward questions that remain unresolved within institutional frameworks.

In 2006, after the publication of Baba ve Piç, she was prosecuted under Article 301 for “insulting Turkishness.” The case was based on fictional characters. She was acquitted on 21 September 2006, but the trial marked a shift in how her work is read, placing it within ongoing debates about memory, silence, and narrative authority.

She writes in both Turkish and English. These are not interchangeable forms. Her Turkish prose carries idiomatic and cultural density, while her English writing tends to expand outward structurally. She does not translate herself. She repositions.

From Aşk:

“Başlı başına bir dünyadır aşk. Ya tam ortasındasındır ya da dışındasındır.”
Love is a world of its own. You are either inside it or outside it.

There is no neutral position.

Later:

“Çemberler çemberleri doğurur.”
Circles give birth to circles.

Her narratives are polyphonic. Voices overlap, interrupt, and contradict. The past does not remain behind the present. It moves through it.

İstanbul appears not as description but as accumulation. Fragments, encounters, and layered histories shape the space of her work.

She does not write in silence or in order. She writes in cafes, restaurants, airports, and train stations. She has said she panics in clean, tidy environments where everything is in its place. The habit began in İstanbul, in small bakeries where bread and börek moved through the air while she worked. The noise was not distraction. It was condition.

Books

Pinhan (1997)
A Sufi initiate moves through a world where identity shifts and dissolves. The language is dense and draws on older literary and mystical registers. It is difficult, but foundational.

Mahrem (2000)
Bodies are watched, categorized, and exposed. Visibility becomes a form of pressure rather than freedom. The novel examines what it means to be seen and defined.

Bit Palas (2002)
An apartment building in İstanbul slowly fills with lives. Objects remain, smells linger, and the structure absorbs memory. Individual stories begin to overlap.

Araf (2004)
Characters live between places without fully arriving. Temporary spaces, unfinished conversations, and suspended identities shape the narrative.

Baba ve Piç (2006, written in English; Turkish translation published before the English edition in 2007)
Two families, one in İstanbul and one in the United States, are connected through a past that is not openly spoken. Memory appears through absence and silence.

Siyah Süt (2007, Turkish original; English edition Black Milk published later)
A fragmented account of postpartum depression. Internal voices divide and compete. Writing and motherhood do not easily coexist.

Aşk (2009)
A contemporary reader encounters a manuscript about Mevlânâ Celâleddîn-i Rûmî and Şems-i Tebrizî. Two timelines unfold and begin to affect one another. Love appears as disruption rather than stability.

İskender (2011)
A family moves between Turkey and London. Questions of honor and expectation shape a single act whose consequences unfold across multiple lives.

Ustam ve Ben (2013)
Set in the Ottoman world of architecture, the novel follows an apprentice to Mimar Sinan. Buildings rise, but relationships and power structures remain central.

Havva’nın Üç Kızı (2016)
Three women connected by a shared past. Belief, doubt, and identity intersect through memory.

On Dakika Otuz Sekiz Saniye (2019)
A woman’s consciousness continues briefly after death. Each minute reconstructs memory through sensory detail. A life returns in fragments.

Kayıp Ağaçlar Adası (2021)
A narrative shaped by division, memory, and landscape. The perspective expands beyond the human.