The Politics of Fiction

Elif Shafak has got a problem with the literary world today. She says that just as she was stereotyped as “the Turkish student” during her education, she and other authors are also stereotyped based on their identity when it comes to their writing. Readers accept fictional stories from western world writers, but it’s unfortunate that writers from other cultures who have been stereotyped as “multicultural writers,” without any distinctions, have no demand for such work, and find they must write about real-life; in Shafak’s case: about Muslim women.

Without wanting to define Shafak as a Turkish writer, it must be said that she is the most-read author from Turkey, whose novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, has had her prosecuted for “insulting Turkishness.” She is also the author of The Forty Rules of Love and writes in both English and Turkish.

She’s a hardened criminal-writer who is leading the charge against identity politics in fiction. Right on. And write on.

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