I have read three of Elif Shafak’s books: 10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in This Strange World, Island of the Missing Trees and The Bastard of Istanbul. I feel like I know her whole personality after reading these three masterpieces. She has a simple, yet elegant way of writing, which is an easy read, but sprinkled with convoluted words, most of which I came across for the first time.
She has a certain personality of one can say a nihilist, yet she shows great reverence for orthodox, religious cultures and traditions. I can say, to some extent, she is even superstitious, as her books have shown a great deal of religious fallacies. I don’t know, it might again just be, just a story line, and not her actual belief. But these pious fallacies have shown up in the three books that I read, such as premonitions, soothsayers, djinnis, etc. She is also a feminist, who supports women no matter what their actions and deeds were or which profession they are in. I have noticed that she is huge crusader for prostitutes, and people who work in similar lines of fields. She brings them out through her writing, as people who aren’t any different from others and they have work for which they respectfully get paid for. I have huge respect for her for this benevolent portrayal.
Her stories are mainly situated in the Southern Europe and Middle East, mainly in Armenia, Turkey and Istanbul, maybe because she is a British-Turkish herself. She tries to connect different groups of people through her stories and they all have a tinge of history in them, which talks about the countries’ past wars and distresses. She brings together cultures, and justifies their past and current actions as humanly. Her main motto throughout these novels have been, in my opinion, let the bygones be bygones, let’s be humble peers on the basis of our current relationships.
Even though the journey through her three books have been quite the ride and I thoroughly enjoyed reading these novels for giving me the fascinating and intoxicating drive, I won’t be reading more of her novels in the near future. It is so because all of her books have very depressing edges to them with the protagonists, always being women, having gone through a heart throbbing life time and struggles in the past and the present, and they are all struggling to find their places in this world. It is truly depressing, and reminds one of the struggles that others go through. The empathy gets too much from the reader’s side, in this case, mine, and makes them have an existential crisis and live through the protagonist’s mind, up till the end of the book.
Safe to say I would totally recommend her books to anyone who is an avid reader, for the amount of mind boggling it gives one.