Elif Shafak

Elif Shafak’s most recent book, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, has been shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize. In 2006 her novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, was the first work of fiction to be prosecuted under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which prohibits ‘public denigration of Turkishness’. She was acquitted. Shafak is a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Photograph © Ferhat Elik