Elif Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish novelist whose work has been translated into fifty-five languages. The author of nineteen books, twelve of which are novels, she is a bestselling author in many countries around the world. Shafak's latest novel, The Island of Missing Trees, was a top ten Sunday Times bestseller, a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick and was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the Women's Prize. Her previous novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the RSL Ondaatje Prize; longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award; and chosen as Blackwell's Book of the Year. She is a Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature. Shafak was awarded the Halld r Laxness International Literature Prize for her contribution to 'the renewal of the art of storytelling.'
A brilliant, unforgettable novel, which raises big ideas of 'who owns the past' with nuance and complexity. Elif Shafak ties together diverse time periods and places in a way that seems both natural and wonderfully unexpected. -- Mary Beard Another mystical novel from Elif Shafak, in which time dissolves in the timeless water of two rivers and the characters who live beside them. The story flows like the rivers from ancient Nineveh to present-day London with characters of the distant past as bright and vivid as those of today. -- Philippa Gregory Elif Shafak is a unique and powerful voice in world literature -- Ian McEwan Shafak makes a new home for us in words -- Colum McCann A writer of important, beautiful, painful, truthful novels -- Marian Keyes