Books to gift during Eid

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12 books that make great gifts for Eid

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10 books about Muslim experiences to read this Ramadan

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Must-read books by women, as chosen by our readers

Books by Elif Shafak on a colourful background.

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Where to start reading Elif Shafak’s books

The Gaze

From award-winning writer Elif Shafak, the Orange Prize long-listed author of The Forty Rules of Love and The Architect's Apprentice, The Gaze is a humorous and carnivalesque exploration of what it means to look and be looked at... 
 
An obese woman and her lover, a dwarf, are sick of being stared at wherever they go and so decide to reverse roles. The man goes out wearing make-up and the woman draws a moustache on her face. 
 
This elegant, unforgettable novel explores our desire to look at others. 
 
'Beautifully evoked' The Times 
 
'Original and compelling' TLS 
 
*** ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, IS AVAILABLE NOW ***

Plays with ideas of beauty and ugliness like they're Rubik's cubes

Elif Shafak is the best author to come out of Turkey in the last decade

A gorgeous novel: worldly, intriguing, raucous yet elegant, teeming with love and cruelty - and brilliantly alive

Shafak's novel is a carefully crafted work of imagination... [it] will confirm Shafak's reputation as a writer of impressive range, who is not afraid to ask the big questions

Shafak paints a gorgeous picture of a city teeming with secrets, intrigue and romance. Lush

Vividly evoked, beautifully written... this edifying novel shows how hate and envy destroy, and how love might build the world anew

Shafak blends historical fiction, urban politics and youthful curiosity in an elaborate map of Turkey whose key is the book itself

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish novelist, whose work has been translated into fifty-eight languages. The author of twenty books, thirteen of which are novels, she is a bestselling author in many countries around the world. Shafak’s novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. The Island of Missing Trees was a Sunday Times bestseller, and was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. There are Rivers in the Sky, which won an Edward Stanford Award for Fiction, is her latest novel. 
 
Shafak holds a PhD in political science, and is a Fellow and a Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature. She has been awarded the medal of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and, in 2024, was awarded the British Academy President's Medal for ‘her excellent body of work which demonstrates an incredible intercultural range’.

An obese woman and her lover, a dwarf, are sick of being stared at wherever they go, and so decide to reverse roles. The man goes out wearing make-up and the woman draws a moustache on her face. But while the woman wants to hide away from the world, the man meets the stares from passers-by head on, compiling his 'Dictionary of Gazes' to explore the boundaries between appearance and reality. 
 
Intertwined with the story of a bizarre freak-show organized in Istanbul in the 1880s, The Gaze is a humorous and carnivalesque exploration of what it means to look and be looked at...

On Motherhood and Writing

Black Milk

Black Milk is the affecting and beautifully written memoir on motherhood and writing by Turkey's bestselling female writer Elif Shafak, author of Honour, The Gaze and The Bastard of Istanbul which was long-listed for the Orange prize. 
 
Postpartum depression affects millions of new mothers every year, and- like most of its victims- Elif Shafak never expected to be one of them. 
 
But after the birth of her first child in 2006, the internationally bestselling Turkish author remembers how "for the first time my adult life . . . words wouldn't speak to me". 
 
As her despair finally eased, Shafak sought to resuscitate her writing life by chronicling her own experiences. 
 
In her intimate memoir, she reveals how she struggled to overcome her depression and how literature provided the salvation she so desperately needed. 
 
'An intimate, affecting memoir . . . Her passion for literature is contagious, and her struggle with postpartum depression and writer's block reinforces how carefully all of us must tread. Beautifully rendered, Shafak's Black Milk is an epic poem to women everywhere' Colleen Mondor 
 
*** ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, IS AVAILABLE NOW ***

Black Milk is a book to dip into, to lend around, a book that you feel deserves to be read by all women attempting to draw together so many differing aspirations. . . It's a book to be readily passed on to. . .

An intimate, affecting memoir . . . Her passion for literature is contagious, and her struggle with postpartum depression and writer's block reinforces how carefully all of us must tread.

Postnatal depression affects millions of new mothers every year, and – like most of its victims – Elif Shafak never expected to be one of them. But after the birth of her first child in 2006, the internationally bestselling Turkish author remembers how, ‘for the first time in my adult life... words wouldn't speak to me’. 
 
As her despair finally eased, Shafak sought to resuscitate her writing life by chronicling her own experiences. In her beautiful and intimate memoir, she reveals how she struggled to overcome her depression and how literature provided the salvation she so desperately needed.

Honour

From Booker-shortlisted author Elif Shafak, Honour is a gripping tale of love, betrayal and clashing cultures. 
 
'My mother died twice. I promised myself I would not let her story be forgotten' 
 
Pembe and Adem Toprak leave Turkey for London. There they make new lives for their family. Yet the traditions and beliefs of their home come with them - carried in the blood of their children, Iskender and Esma. Trapped by past mistakes, the Toprak children find their lives torn apart and transformed by a brutal and chilling crime. 
 
Set in Turkey and London in the 1970s, Honour explores pain and loss, loyalty and betrayal, the clash of tradition and modernity, as well as the love and heartbreak that can tear any family apart. 
 
'One of the best writers in the world today' Hanif Kureishi 
 
'Vivid storytelling... that explores the darkest aspects of faith and love' Sunday Telegraph 
 
*** ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, IS AVAILABLE NOW ***

A powerful book; thoughtful, provoking and compassionate

Fascinating and gripping - a wonderful novel

Elif Shafak has woven with masterful care and compassion one immigrant family's heartbreaking story - a story nurtured in the terrible silences between men and women

Honour is a powerful tale of family connection and heartbreak, offering us insight and delight in equal measure . . . an exquisite and deep rendering of the fullness of life.

Aurelie Sheehan, author of The Anxiety of Everyday Objects

[Elif Shafak] joins writers such as Hanif Kureishi, Zadie Smith, Monica Ali, Aamer Hussein, Andrea Levy, Hanan al-Shakyh and Leila Aboulela, who offer us fictional glimpses of London's Others

An honour killing is at the centre of this stunning novel . . . Exotic, evocative and utterly gripping

Lushly and memorably magic-realist . . . This is an extraordinarily skilfully crafted and ambitious narrative

The book calls to mind The Color Purple in the fierceness of its engagement with male violence and its determination to see its characters to a better place. But Shafak is closer to Isabel Allende in spirit, confidence and charm. Her portrayal of Muslim cultures, both traditional and globalising, is as hopeful as it is politically sophisticated. This alone should gain her the world audience she has long deserved

Moving, subtle and ultimately hopeful, Honour is further proof that Shafak is the most exciting Turkish novelist to reach western readers in years

Vivid storytelling...  that explores the darkest aspects of faith and love

Shafak treats an important, absorbing subject in a fast-paced, internationally familiar style that will make it accessible to a wide readership

'My mother died twice. I promised myself I would not let her story be forgotten' 
 
And so begins the story of Esma, a young Kurdish woman in London trying to come to terms with the terrible murder her brother has committed. Esma tells the story of her family stretching back three generations; back to her grandmother and the births of her mother and Aunt in a village on the edge of the Euphrates. 
 
Named Pembe and Jamila (meaning Pink and Beautiful rather than the names their mother wanted to call them, Destiny and Enough), the twin girls have very different futures ahead of them, all of which will end in tragedy on a street in East London in 1978. 
 
Honour is a powerful, brilliant and moving account of pain and loss, loyalty and betrayal, the clash of tradition and modernity, as well as the love and heartbreak that can tear any family apart.

Three Daughters of Eve

From Booker-shortlisted author Elif Shafak, comes a powerful tale of faith, love and friendship set across Istanbul and Oxford 
 
Shirin, Peri and Mona, they were the most unlikely of friends. They were the Sinner, the Believer and the Confused. 
 
On a spring evening in Istanbul, Peri is on her way to a dinner party - a night of luxury a far cry from her upbringing. 
 
But when her handbag is stolen her world shifts violently. She starts to doubt how she got here: a traumatic Istanbul childhood, student years in Oxford, the rebellious professor who led her and best friends Shirin and Mona to question everything - Islam, love, life, even God - and the scandal that tore them all apart. 
 
Over one desperate night she tries to make sense of a past she has tried to forget - but can we ever escape who we once were? 
 
*** ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, IS AVAILABLE NOW ***

A terrific book. Poetic, poignant, trenchant.

An intelligent, fierce and beguiling read

A thoughtful, charming book that offers a connection to other worlds, perspectives and possibilities

An intense, discursive and absorbing novel

One of the most important writers at work today, Elif Shafak eloquently explores Turkey's tumultuous present and past. Her magnificent latest moves between Istanbul and Oxford in a fascinating exploration of faith and friendship, rich and poor, and the devastating clash of tradition and modernity

A brilliant and moving novel. Elif Shafak writes about religion without superficiality or special pleading, retaining a sense of its impossible possibility or its possible impossibility. Three Daughters of Eve is a remarkable accomplishment

Elif Shafak's writing leaps off the page. In Three Daughters of Eve she takes us spine-tinglingly right under the skin of three women, exposing the strains of friendship through love and loss. An utterly engrossing read.

Frances Osborne, bestselling author of The Bolter

Shafak's topical 10th novel is both an interrogation and a defence of Muslim identity

Luscious, heartbreaking, completely absorbing. It is a full-blown saga of emotion and character, straddling countries, cultures and languages, exploring its women's ambitions and desires; and at the same time a steady-eyed examination of the nameless rules - of femininity, duty, belief and behaviour - that keep us in line and under control. This is an absolutely consuming novel about women who know what they want, and a warning about the price we pay, written with the fluency and depth of an author at the very top of her game.

Exuberant, epic and comic, fantastical and realistic . . . like all good stories it conveys deeper meanings about human experience

Financial Times on 'The Architect's Apprentice'

A powerful book; thoughtful, provoking and compassionate

Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat, on 'Honour'

Vivid storytelling... that explores the darkest aspects of faith and love

Moving, subtle and ultimately hopeful, Honour is further proof that Shafak is the most exciting Turkish novelist to reach western readers in years

Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground - an old Polaroid of three young women and their university professor. A relic from a past - and a love - Peri had tried desperately to forget. 
 
The photograph takes Peri back to Oxford, where she was sent at eighteen, abroad for the first time: to her dazzling, rebellious professor and his life-changing course on God, to her home with her two best friends, Shirin and Mona, and their arguments about Islam and femininity and, finally, to the scandal that tore them all apart. Over one desperate night she tries to make sense of a past she has tried to forget – but can we ever escape who we once were?

The Bastard of Istanbul

A gripping and beautiful novel from Elif Shafak, Booker-shortlisted author of The Island of Missing Trees and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World 
 
One rainy afternoon in Istanbul a woman walks into a doctor's surgery. 'I want an abortion,' she announces. She is nineteen years old, and unmarried. What happens that afternoon will change her life, and the lives of everyone around her. 
 
 Twenty years later, Asya Kazanci lives with her extended family in Istanbul. A mysterious curse causes all the men to die by the age of 41, so it is a house of women, among them her beautiful, rebellious mother, Zeliha, clairvoyant Auntie Banu and bar-brawl widow, Auntie Cevriye. But when Asya’s Armenian-American cousin Armanoush comes to stay, long hidden family secrets connected with Turkey's turbulent past begin to emerge. 
 
'Wonderfully magical, incredible, breathtaking...will have you gasping with disbelief in the last few pages' Sunday Express 
 
'A beautiful book, the finest I have read about Turkey' Irish Times 
 
'Heartbreaking...the beauty of Islam pervades Shafak's book' Vogue 
 
*** ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, IS AVAILABLE NOW ***

Unquestionably an ambitious book, exuberant and teeming . . . a novel crammed with characters and themes, not unlike Istanbul itself

Wonderfully magical, incredible, breathtaking . . . will have you gasping with disbelief in the last few pages

Heartbreaking . . . the beauty of Islam pervades Shafak's book

A writer whose artistry matches her ambition . . . she has taken on a subject of deep moral consequence

Tremendous exuberance . . . I do like a writer with a purpose

An astonishingly rich and lively story ... handled with an enchantingly light touch

Overflows with a kitchen sink's worth of zany characters ... an entertaining and insightful ensemble novel that posits the universality of family, culture and coincidence

A tender and spirited novel... Steeped in the sights, colours and smells of Turkey's capital, it grapples with the country's dark legacies

With compassion and a deftly humorous touch, Shafak fashions a woman's world that is at once micro and macro, using everyday material - recipes, lullabies, superstitions - to illuminate a broader reality

One rainy afternoon in Istanbul a woman walks into a doctor’s surgery. ‘I want an abortion,’ she announces. She is nineteen years old and unmarried. What happens that day will change her life, and the lives of everyone around her. 
 
Twenty years later, Asya Kazanci lives with her extended family in Istanbul. A mysterious curse causes all the men to die by the age of forty-one, so it is a house of women, among them her beautiful, rebellious mother, Zeliha, clairvoyant Auntie Banu and bar-brawl widow, Auntie Cevriye. But when Asya’s Armenian-American cousin Armanoush comes to stay, long-hidden family secrets connected with Turkey’s turbulent past begin to emerge.

The Forty Rules of Love

The international bestseller from the Booker-shortlisted author of The Island of Missing Trees and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World 
 
* One of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World'* 
 
"Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough..." 
 
Ella Rubinstein has a husband, three teenage children, and a pleasant home. Everything that should make her confident and fulfilled. Yet there is an emptiness at the heart of Ella's life - an emptiness once filled by love. 
 
 So when Ella reads a manuscript about the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi and his mentor Shams of Tabriz, and his forty rules of life and love, she is ready to look at her life anew. Compelled to embrace change, she embarks on a journey to meet the mysterious author. It is a quest infused with Sufi mysticism and verse, taking Ella and us into a faraway world where faith and doubt are heartbreakingly explored. The Forty Rules of Love is a mesmerising tale of discovery, language, truth and, of course, love itself. 
'Enlightening, enthralling. An affecting paean to faith and love' Metro 
 
'Colourfully woven and beguilingly intelligent' Daily Telegraph 
 
'The past and present fit together beautifully in a passionate defence of passion itself' The Times 
 
*** ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, IS AVAILABLE NOW ***

With its timely, thought-provoking message . . . The Forty Rules of Love deserves to be a global publishing phenomenon

Enlightening, enthralling. An affecting paean to faith and love

Colourfully woven and beguilingly intelligent

The past and present fit together beautifully in a passionate defence of passion itself

Ella Rubinstein has a husband, three teenage children and a pleasant home. Everything that should make her confident and fulfilled. Yet there is an emptiness at the heart of her life – an emptiness once filled by love. 
 
So when Ella reads a manuscript about the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi and his mentor Shams of Tabriz, and his forty rules of life and love, she is ready to look at her life anew. Compelled to embrace change, she embarks on a journey to meet the mysterious author. It is a quest infused with Sufi mysticism and verse, taking Ella and us into a faraway world where faith and doubt are heartbreakingly explored. The Forty Rules of Love is a mesmerizing tale of discovery, language, truth and, of course, love itself.

Elif Shafak

Picaresque charm with a touch of magic realism

An enchanting combination of compassion and cruelty . . . Elif Shafak is the best author to come out of Turkey in the last decade

Ms Shafak is well set to challenge Mr Pamuk as Turkey's foremost contemporary novelist

Bonbon Palace was once a stately apartment block in Istanbul. Now it is a sadly dilapidated home to ten wildly different individuals and their families. 
 
There's a womanizing, hard-drinking academic with a penchant for philosophy; a 'clean freak' and her lice-ridden daughter; a lapsed Jew in search of true love; and a charmingly naïve mistress whose shadowy past lurks in the building. When the rubbish at Bonbon Palace is stolen, a mysterious sequence of events unfold that result in a soul-searching quest for truth. 
 
By turns comic and tragic, The Flea Palace is an outstandingly original novel driven by a powerful sense of social justice.

Elif Shafak

Praise for The Flea Palace

Picaresque charm with a touch of magic realism

An enchanting combination of compassion and cruelty . . . Elif Shafak is the best author to come out of Turkey in the last decade

Picaresque

Picaresque charm with a touch of magic realism

An enchanting combination of compassion and cruelty . . . Elif Shafak is the best author to come out of Turkey in the last decade

Picaresque

Picaresque charm with a touch of magic realism

An enchanting combination of compassion and cruelty . . . Elif Shafak is the best author to come out of Turkey in the last decade

Picaresque

Books by Elif Shafak

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Articles featuring Elif Shafak

12 books that make great gifts for Eid

10 books about Muslim experiences to read this Ramadan

Must-read books by women, as chosen by our readers

Where to start reading Elif Shafak’s books

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