Elif Shafak's 3 best books

The diplomatic career and literature seems a magical consequence, a derivative that makes the traveled children of these international professionals, storytellers and chroniclers with that curd of migration as a destination until maturity. From Isabel Allende but also Carmen Posadas placeholder image...

In the case of Elif shafak the same happens. He went through half the world and acquired nationalities like someone who collects souvenirs. And in that cosmopolitan life, from which to extract so many things to tell, there remains the desire to write and continue traveling.

With her first Turkish roots, Elif has also narratively blended with Istanbul, the Ottoman capital in its capacity as a bridge between both worlds, the eastern and the western. His literature is a synthesis and shines in its brilliant execution, in that humanism that starts from the lyric of the small and ends up rising, from its characters immersed in the everyday life of their cultures, to the most transcendental.

Elif Shafak's Top 3 Recommended Novels

My last 10 minutes and 38 seconds in this strange world

It is not a whimsical title in its length. In Elif everything makes sense. In fact, we are all likely to spend ten more minutes than expected in this world once the engine stops.

Because the heart will stop beating and, therefore, our body stops having the freedom to express gestures and movements, but our brain remains as if closing the session, and in those final 10 mysterious minutes there is no way to tell what happens. . There are various myths and legends to cover our exit from the stage. We have all talked about lights at the end of the tunnel or a loss of 21 grams that occurs in our body immediately after the last heartbeat, the weight of the soul that rises...

The point is that we can know little and much more brings us to mind to focus on the above, on the zillions of beats that, with a bit of luck, we may have left... Leila's brain has entered those ten minutes of extra time after the last beat of the heart.

During that period, while his body lies in a garbage container on the outskirts of Istanbul, time flows and, minute by minute, brings him a new memory: his childhood with his father and two mothers in a large, old house in a peaceful city in Turkey; the gossip of women when men are at the mosque; the flight to Istanbul to escape family abuse and lies and an arranged marriage; the love found unexpectedly in Mama Amarga's brothel... And the five friends of hers that she makes along the way "her real family" of hers and who, while she is dying, desperately try to find her.

The bastard of Istanbul

In its rabid life of alleys, Istanbul has that something of an authentic city where it exists, of a city yet to be conquered for the decadent homogeneity of Western cities.

It is not surprising that someone as well traveled as Elif ends up discovering that in her origins lies a part of the charm of humanity that should never be erased from urban life. A story like this gains in intensity thanks to the setting and its connotations. Visit Istanbul! Something obligatory. From the hand of one of the most internationally acclaimed Turkish authors comes this novel about the story of two families. For Armanoush, recently arrived from Arizona in search of her roots, Istanbul is like a large ship with an uncertain route.

Hosted by her stepfather's family, this young Armenian-American will unravel the secrets of two families united by the tragedy that separated Turks and Armenians at the beginning of the XNUMXth century. An exciting family saga about one of the most murky episodes in Western history: the many times denied Armenian genocide.

The architect of the universe

Elif Shafak also dared at the time with historical fiction. How not with his passionately idolized Istanbul. Because if Rome is the eternal city, of similar immortality this city is erected between two worlds.

There are cities where the stones contain the history of the whole world and passions that live from our imagination. Jahan knew that his love could only be drawn in the air, but that little mattered to him. The young man had arrived from India when he was only twelve years old, at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, to work in the service of the great architect Sinan and build the best palaces and mosques in Istanbul. He brought with him a faithful friend, a white elephant who dazzled the court, and in the exotic gardens of the imperial mansion Jahan met Mihrimah, the sultan's daughter.

Sinan's advice, the elephant's knowing gaze and the desire for the beautiful woman followed the man for many years, as he gathered projects and memories. Now, shortly before dying, old man Jahan finally tells us his story: we will know how he lived his love and how he kept the secrets learned from his master, a few words that will take us to the center of the universe, that place where everything is possible, even the happiness…