In today's Notes on Craft edition, I revisit an interview I took back in 2021 with an author I admire greatly: the award-winning British-Turkish novelist Elif Shafak.
Thank you, Vesela, and what a beautiful note. I too, carry othermess in so many ways which intersect and overlap, including, like you, leaving my home country many years ago. Another favourite writer of mine, Georgy Gospodinov, who was also the editor of my debut novel and the 2023 International Booker Prize winner, wrote once that we're all immigrants - from our childhood. Once we understand and accept others, we would have accepted humanity.
Natalia, thank you very much for posting this fascinating exchange. What migration does to human beings but also animals, in fact the whole universe is a fascinating theme in Ruth Padel's We Are All from Somewhere Else. However, as I picked up The Island of Missing Trees, it took me smack back to my childhood and our back yard with a big fig tree throwing thick shadow in those scorching summers. Climbing the tree and finding a comfortable position to read became almost a daily routine for me on hot summer days.
Needles to say, I just coul not put down Elif Shafak's book till the end. Exploring the destiny of migrant lives connected perfectly as I, too, left my home place on the Adriatic coast many years ago to live in the German speaking world.
Thank you, Vesela, and what a beautiful note. I too, carry othermess in so many ways which intersect and overlap, including, like you, leaving my home country many years ago. Another favourite writer of mine, Georgy Gospodinov, who was also the editor of my debut novel and the 2023 International Booker Prize winner, wrote once that we're all immigrants - from our childhood. Once we understand and accept others, we would have accepted humanity.
Natalia, thank you very much for posting this fascinating exchange. What migration does to human beings but also animals, in fact the whole universe is a fascinating theme in Ruth Padel's We Are All from Somewhere Else. However, as I picked up The Island of Missing Trees, it took me smack back to my childhood and our back yard with a big fig tree throwing thick shadow in those scorching summers. Climbing the tree and finding a comfortable position to read became almost a daily routine for me on hot summer days.
Needles to say, I just coul not put down Elif Shafak's book till the end. Exploring the destiny of migrant lives connected perfectly as I, too, left my home place on the Adriatic coast many years ago to live in the German speaking world.