Elif Shafak

Turkey's controversial novelist An award-winning novelist who has published her sixth novel, 'The Bastard of Istanbul' (2006) had a brush with the Turkish authority over her novel. This is a deftly spun tale of two families - one Armenian-American and the other Turkish - who are burdened by dark secrets and historical tragedies rooted in a common Istanbul past. What happened between their two peoples in the confrontation of 1915? Her first English language novel was her fifth novel 'The Saint of Incipient Insanities'. Well educated with PhD in political science Shafak's major in Contemporary Western Political Thought and her minor in Middle Eastern Studies has nurtured her to a critical, interdisciplinary, and gender-conscious re-reading of the literature on the Middle East & West, Islam and modernity. Currently Shafak is teaching in the Near Eastern Studies Department at The University of Arizona. Her courses include 'Literature and Exile,' 'Politics of Memory,' and 'Sexualities and Gender in the Muslim World'. Elif Shafak was born in France, spent her teenage years in Spain before returning to Turkey. An outspoken intellectual and activist, she continues to write for various daily and monthly publications in Turkey.

Compiler: M. Nauman Khan