One of my good friends from graduate school, Alev, is from Turkey, and I remember asking her about Turkish authors I should read, and she immediately mentioned Elif Shafak. I’ve had several of her books on my to-read pile over the last few years, but this was the first one I actually read and I’m sorry that I waited so long. Honour is a complex multigenerational novel that begins in London in the 1990’s as Esma Toprak mentally prepares herself for the release of her brother, […]
I shouldn’t know more than our culture’s leading experts…
While reading this, I found myself questioning beliefs I have held for many years. Not because this book presents novel ideas or is deeply informative about a subject I mistakenly thought I was familiar with (though it did represent what are to me novel ideas, and I am not overly familiar with this subject), but because its author’s views occupy the same space as mine, and he has fallen not only into controversy, but disfavor. Which, of course, makes me question how I see the […]