The Turkish Novelist Elif Shafak Wants You to Read More Women – The New York Times

A Millennium of Turkish Literature, by Talat Halman, is a wonderful and beautifully written book, so thats a great place to start. Reading Nazim Hikmet is essential to understand not only how oppression works but also how strong is the struggle for freedom. Sabahattin Alis Madonna in a Fur Coat was released in English a few years ago, and its brilliant.

What do you read when youre working on a book? And what kind of reading do you avoid while writing?

Before I start a novel I do extensive research and I basically try to read everything I can find on the subject. I have spent long years in academia, and maybe that has given me a sense of discipline, which I normally lack. So depending on what I am planning to write, I read a lot and I think a lot. This could be anything: from Sephardic history to Ottoman architecture, from rare birds to lives of sex workers in Istanbul. Then, when I start writing the novel, I avoid reading novels, and I only read poetry for a while. Especially Walt Whitman, W. B. Yeats, Khalil Gibran, Anna Akhmatova and Rumi. I also love Maya Angelou and I must say Audre Lorde has a special place in my heart.

Has a book ever brought you closer to another person, or come between you?

Every novel that I have read has brought me closer to another human being, I believe. There are only very, very few books that I wish had never ever been written. One is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Its full of dangerous lies and it paved the way for the Holocaust. Another horrible book is The Hammer of Witches, published in the 15th century. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people, mostly women, have been accused of witchcraft because of this nonsense, and killed, imprisoned or tortured. The Camp of the Saints, which is now widely read by the far right and its orators, is also full of hatred, racism and xenophobia.

What moves you most in a work of literature?

The voice, primarily. Both the art and the craft of storytelling. I love the waltz of the heart and the mind. The pessimism of the mind and the optimism of the heart, as Gramsci would say.

What genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid?

I read everything and anything that speaks to me: political philosophy, neuroscience, cultural history. I also read graphic novels, comic books, cookbooks. Whatever interests me in that moment in time, I sit down and read it. I have no regard for so-called highbrow literature versus lowbrow literature. Never understood those distinctions. I have only one golden rule: I try to read as widely as possible, so rather than staying in the same mental comfort zone year after year, I like to travel across disciplines and genres and cultures.

Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Your favorite antihero or villain?

Orlando is my all-time fictional hero/heroine. I also love the fact that Virginia Woolf calls that book a biography. As for a favorite antihero, Jay Gatsby, of course. The Great Gatsby is a remarkable book that needs to be revisited time and again.

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The Turkish Novelist Elif Shafak Wants You to Read More Women - The New York Times