Elif Shafak
(France, 1971) is an award-winning Turkish-British bestselling author and important critical voice in world literature with a vast body of novels, essays and nonfiction. Her books, written in Turkish and English, have been published in 55 languages and nominated for major literary awards. Her oeuvre is praised for how she blends Eastern and Western narrative traditions into fiction that is at once local and global. In her books, she denounces religious fanaticism and xenophobia. She has a special interest in feminism, Sufism, Ottoman culture and the city of Istanbul. Her novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize. Her 2006 novel The Flea Palace deals with the picturesque lives of the inhabitants of a crumbling apartment building in Istanbul. Other well-read titles include The Bastard of Istanbul (2006), The Forty Rules of Love (2011), Black Milk: On Writing, Motherhood and the Harem Within (2012), The House of the Four Winds (2013) and The Three Daughters of Eva (2017). In 2024 she published her novel There Are Rivers in the Sky, set on the shores of the Tigris and the Thames.
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Elif Shafak - There are rivers in the sky
International bestselling author Elif Shafak talks to Sophie Derkzen about her new novel There Are Rivers in the Sky. A conversation about how water remembers, and people forget. How we are connected to the past and what we can learn from those who have gone before us. Naaz, singer-songwriter and great admirer of Elif Shafak, will pay tribute to her, acccompanied on piano by Willem 't Hart.
Elif Shafak is an award-winning Turkish-British bestselling author and important critical voice in world literature with a vast body of novels, essays and nonfiction. Her books, written in Turkish and English, have been published in 55 languages and nominated for major literary awards. Her oeuvre is praised for how she blends Eastern and Western narrative traditions into fiction that is at once local and global. In her books, she denounces religious fanaticism and xenophobia. She has a special interest in feminism, Sufism, Ottoman culture and the city of Istanbul. Well-read titles include The Bastard of Istanbul (2006), The Forty Rules of Love (2011), Black Milk: On Writing, Motherhood and the Harem Within (2012), The House of the Four Winds (2013) and The Three Daughters of Eva (2017). In 2024 she published her novel There Are Rivers in the Sky, set on the shores of the Tigris and the Thames.
Naaz is an artist, singer-songwriter, producer and director. In 2017, Naaz shot to fame with tracks like Words and Up to Something, both now accounting for millions of streams. She released her debut EP Bits of Naaz in 2018, followed by the EP The Beautiful Struggle in 2019. In 2023, her debut album Never Have I Ever, was met with rave reviews. The record highlights her versatility with layered songwriting. Naaz makes contemporary, minimalist pop in which she uses Arabic influences and natural ambient sounds to deliver a sound that is very much her own and authentic. Naaz is currently working on new music, with releases of new songs in the next few months, and a new album scheduled for release autumn 2025! She is one of the four permanent club members of VPRO's Club Lees.
Willem 't Hart is a keyboard player, pianist and producer from Rotterdam. He grew up in a musical family, studied at the Utrechts Conservatorium and completed his education cum laude at the conservatoire (Codarts) in Rotterdam. As a keyboard player, Willem played with well-known artists such as Gregory Porter, Iris Hond and Naaz. Besides music, Willem also has a successful career in the fashion world. There, he worked with designers from top brands such as Prada, Dior and Gucci. In 2020, he decided to focus entirely on his passion for music, which resulted in the release of several EPs with a fine mix of electronica, pop and jazz.
Sophie Derkzen is a journalist and presenter with a fascination for international politics and culture. On Dutch national broadcaster NPO Radio 1 she presents Bureau Buitenland for VPRO, awarded the prestigious Silver Reiss Microphone for best radio programme of the year in 2022. She made the podcasts Stad in Oorlog: Charkiv een jaar onder vuur (City at War: Kharkiv one year under fire; winner Silver Reiss Microphone 2023) and Generatie Merkel (4**** in de Volkskrant).She previously wrote for major Dutch publications and was a guest editor at the German newspaper Die Zeit.
Elif Shafak - There are rivers in the sky is curated for Writers Unlimited Festival 2025 by Ilonka Reintjens.
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Winternachten Lecture: Elif Shafak
With: Bas Heijne, Elif Shafak, Osama Abdulrasol
The writer as commuter
The novels of Elif Shafak have been praised in the Dutch press as "cosmopolitan, with a universal human message". In 2005 Winternachten introduced Shafak in the Netherlands. Now she opens the festival with the Winternachten Lecture. The lecture can be downloaded here as PDF.In our polarised society, in which the islamic and western worlds are often diametrically oppsed we need new cultural forces. Shafak sees a role for literature. In her Winternachten Lecture she will portray the ideal writer as a commuter between cultures, a nomad who by means of art brings two conflicting worlds closer together. She challenges writers to descend from their ivory towers. Using examples from presentday eastern and western literature she will illustrate her views on literature and multiculturalism.
In recent years Elif Shafak's novels have created quite a stir, not only in Turkey, but alsoi elsewhere in the world. Her first novel in Dutch translation was The Flea Palace (2006), about the pictutesque lives of the inhabitants of a dilapidated apartment building in Istanbul. Important themes in her work are multiculturalism, sexuality and the position of women. In 2006 her novel The Bastard of Istanbul appeared. Shafak was born in Strassbourg and raised as the daughter of a single Turkish diplomat and spent a large part of her youth in Madrid and Amman. She studied international relations at the Technical University of Ankara, where she got her Ph.D. in political science on a dissertation entitled: 'State, secularism and masculinity in the modern Turkish society'. She taught among other things gender studies at the universities of Michigan and Arizona. Other books by Shafak are The Saint of Incipient Insanities (2004), The Gaze (2006) and Black Milk, which appeared in November 2007. Shafak publishes regularly in Turkish newspapers and magazines.
After the lecture Elif Shafak will be interviewed by essay writer and NRC Handelsblad editor Bas Heijne. An English/Dutch text of the lecture will be made available.
DOEN Foundation supports the Winternachten Lecture 2008, because international writers are given an opportunity here to share their views. With their colleagues at the festival, but also with the broader public. Thus new insights are born offering a contribution to the social debate in the Netherlands.
The lecture and the interview are in English. -
Memory, speak
Three writers of international stature talk about the fear of forgetting the past and the task of the writer to recall that past. 'I am the Second World War', Mulisch once claimed about himself. In the work of Shafak and Krog national history also plays an important role. Interview by Rudi Wester. Partly in Dutch and in English.
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Islam and disrupted childhood
With: Elif Shafak, Fouad Laroui, Margalith Kleijwegt, Pieter Hilhorst, Rema Hammami
This was the first programme in the series 'World Speakers' in Korzo Theatre in The Hague, organised by Winternachten and the Institute of Social Studies. The debate looked at traditions and Islam in the education of children in changing and hostile social environments. Participants were Elif Shafak, a writer from Istanbul and lecturer in gender studies in the USA, Rema Hammami from Palestine, lecturer in anthropology and women's studies, Dutch journalist Margalith Kleijwegt, writer of Onzichtbare ouders - de buurt van Mohammed B. (Invisible parents – the neighbourhood of Mohammed B.) and writer Fouad Laroui, raised in Morocco, emigrated to Paris, now living in Amsterdam. Moderator was Pieter Hilhorst.
We compared three situations: immigrants in the jungle of Dutch cities, migrants from Turkish rural areas to Istanbul and other Turkish cities, and Palestinian youth in the 'war zone'. In these situations parents lose control of their children. They rely on school, neighbourhood and government to keep their children on the right track. But in these situations things get out of hand. The traditional Islamic organisations seem to provide a refuge: they give the children structure and a traditional religious education, in Turkey as well as in Palestine and the Netherlands. Rema Hammami's opinion is that the success of the Hamas in Palestine has to do with this kind of social support they offer.
The first part of the evening was a discussion with the four guests. The writers (Fouad Laroui, Elif Shafak, Margalith Kleijwegt) read from their literary work (in the original language, with simultaneous projection of the English translation). In the second part a panel of students from the ISS took part in de debate. The debate was in English.
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The house of the people - on the threshold between East and West
The Turkish writer Elif Shafak and her Dutch colleague Vonne van der Meer create in their novels a world based on human relationships, where coincidence brings characters together or uproots their lives. Chaired by Joyce Roodnat, the two novelists discuss humanity in Turkish and Dutch society. Elif Shafak opens the programme with her essay on Turkey on the threshold between East and West, written for Winternachten.
English spoken
