Elif Shafak in conversation with Daud Aron Ahmed: We Need to do Better

“We need to find a way to go beyond echo chambers.”

“As a writer, as a novelist, you are always interested in stories. But I think we are equally interested in silences, the things we cannot talk about easily. So that includes political taboos, cultural taboos, and sometimes sexual taboos. We should be able to talk about these issues.”

In this interview, author Elif Shafak reflects on her role as a writer in society both in her Turkish homeland and across the globe. With the continuous rise of right-wing populists around the world, she argues, many writers do not have the luxury of remaining apolitical. In light of Brexit and the Trump presidency, for instance, “many Western authors have begun to feel the same way. There is an urgency to respond. You do not have to write political novels, but we have to speak about core democratic issues and the loss of these, or the dangers of losing these core values. I think there are issues, like rule of law, like freedom of speech, like women’s rights, like LGBT rights, about which we cannot remain silent.“

Elif Shafak (b.1971) is a Turkish-British novelist and the most widely read female author in Turkey. Among her many novels are ‘The Bastard of Istanbul’ (2006), ‘The Forty Rules of Love’ (2009), ‘Three Daughters of Eve’ (2016) and ’10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World’ (2019). Shafak is the recipient of several prestigious awards. In 2010 she was awarded the title of Chevalier dans L’Ordre des Arts et Lettres, and in 2017 she was chosen by Politico as one of the twelve people who would make the world better. She lives in London. For more see: https://www.elifsafak.com.tr/home

Elif Shafak was interviewed live onstage by Daud Aron Ahmed at the Louisiana Literature festival in Humlebæk, Denmark in August 2019.

Camera: Rasmus Quistgaard and Anders Lindved
Edited by David Schweiger
Produced by Marc-Christoph Wagner and David Schweiger
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2021
Supported by Nordea-fonden

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