Interview questions for Elif Shafak from Alexandra Büchler-Prague

16 April 2009

You were born in France and have lived in a number of different places, yet Istanbul is the setting of your novels. How have you experiences of life elsewhere influenced your perspective of the city that is now your home? What does Istanbul, an iconic city with a multilayered history, mean to you?

All my life I have lived and felt like a nomad. My writing has been inspired by cultural journeys. Literature has an amazing potential to transcend all national and religious boundaries. I am a Turkish writer. I am at the same time a world citizen. And yet at the same time I feel deeply connected to Istanbul. For artists and writers a city like Istanbul is a treasure. This city if full of stories –stories that are waiting to be told. It is a multilayered city throbbing with life.

Turkish literature is little known in Europe, why is it so, in your view, and what are we missing?

It is such a pity that Turkish literature is not very well known in Europe. I think Turkish writers have a lot to say to the world. Literature has always been very rich and vivid in Turkey. Turkish society is a society of syntheses and combinations. Novelists deal with a wide range of themes. And these could be of great interest to the world. I hope there will be more translations from Turkish into European languages. We Turks read European literature all the time. But this is a one-way street. Europe doesn’t read us as much as we read them. We know the West better than the West knows us.

How does your own writing engage with the Turkish literary tradition and with contemporary writing? Which other literatures are particularly close to you?

I am inspired by various cultural and literary traditions. I do enjoy following Russian, French, American, English and East European literatures. And yet I also read Eastern sources. I am very attached to Sufism. My writing is a combination of East and West, sacred and mundane, rationality and irrationality…. 

You write in two languages – in Turkish, your mother tongue, and in English, your adoptive language. How do you reconcile the two and where does each language take you? Does one generate different storylines and narrative structures than the other? 

Language is my passion. Ever since I was a child I have had a deep love for language, words and letters. But writing in tow languages is a bit unusual in the Turkish literary scene. I feel connected to each language in a different way. Turkish for me is a very emotional language –it is the language of my grandmother and childhood dreams. English for me is a very mathematical language. It has a different labyrinth and rhythm. I like to travel between languages as much as I enjoy travelling between different cultures. It is an enriching experience.

Would you say that not being rooted in one single literary tradition is not only an advantage for a writer, but a necessity?

I am a story teller. And stories recognize no boundaries. They travel the world without visas and passports. I believe every writer should be embracing. A writer cannot have an “Other”. I cannot exclude anyone. I learned from Sufism and literature to travel endlessly to transcend the Self. To have multiple roots and sources of inspiration is a necessity.

There is a much irony and humour - sometimes black humour - in your writing, reminiscent of some of the Russian masters of fiction; are there however subjects that, in your view, too serious to be treated with humour?

Humor is a very central element in my writing. And everything and anything can be told through humor. But the important question is what kind if humor? I like it when humor is subtle, gentle and loving. An arrogant humor is not something that I enjoy. If the writer thinks she is above the society and makes fun of others, I don’t like that. Humor without arrogance is my motto. Also, I do not like to tell sad stories through sadness. I like to tell sadness through humor and I like to convey the humor in life through sadness. The dialectics between humor and sorrow fascinates me.

You have created a number of memorable female characters: powerful, rebellious, eccentric. Women in your fiction are however also often victims of abuse perpetrated by men. Are you commenting on the position of women in society in general? What is your relationship with your characters and what inspires you to create them?

I do not see literature as “telling your own story to other people.” Just the opposite, fiction for me is the ability to be someone else. To transcend the limits of the Self. While writing each character I like to abandon myself and become that character. Thus I do not see myself “above” the characters. I live with them, get to know them each. As I write I also let them write themselves.

The question “what will happen to whom and when” – pivotal to your novel The Flea Palace – sums up the fundamental uncertainty of life, the unknown we have tried to find ways to fathom since time immemorial. It is also the question the novelist holds an answer to. Is reading – among other things – a way of satisfying the desire to know the unknowable that cannot be satisfied in real life? Asking this question is considered inappropriate, even a heresy in some religions and the answer to “who pulls the strings” is ultimately the expression of our belief system. What role does fate play in your novels?

I am deeply interested in and attached to Sufism. From the perspective of Sufism fate is an important theme. It does not mean that our lives are predetermined. Everything is being written and rewritten at this very moment. The Sufi is the child of the present moment. Time is an important element in my writing. But I do not believe in linear time. I prefer to see time as a circle. Or else as a spiral.

Your visit to the book fair will be your first visit to Prague. What are your expectations of the city? Can you imagine setting a story or even a novel there?

You know I have not been to Prague yet but interestingly I feel like I do somehow know the city. And that probably is the effect of books and novels. I have read so many books on Prague or by writers from Prague and through literature I do feel connected. It will be interesting to come to Prague now for the literary festival and see the commonalities and differences between Istanbul and Prague….

Thank you so much...