How We Read is Who We Are
‘What is your favourite play by Shakespeare?’ a reader with a bright and bubbly smile asked me a few months back following a talk at a literary festival.
Unmapped Storylands with Elif Shafak
Stories, anecdotes, wise proverbs and foolish thoughts, literary musings, insights and conversations centred around my personal, unpublished notebooks
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Latest posts
When The Sun Shines On The Frozen Sea
We have known each other for a long time, Anxiety and I.
Helen of Troy and the Perception of Beauty
In the 1860s the British artist Frederick Augustus Sandys finished his painting of Helen of Troy — his version of Helen of Troy, that is.
The Strange Paradox Surrounding the Odyssey
It is the oldest story in European literature, but who wrote it, we still have no clue.
“In a Football Match, Everything is Complicated by the Presence of the Opposite Team”
I have become a football fan.
'The Heart Has Its Reasons which Reason Knows Nothing Of'
We have an upcoming event at the National Gallery where as a panel we will speak about “Extraordinary Artworks from the National Gallery and Sotheby’s”, trying to answer not an easy but truly fascinating…
“I Don’t Know How to be Silent When My Heart is Speaking"
“Writing is a dog’s life, but the onl…
‘So foul a sky clears not without a storm.’
It is a lovely painting, one that seizes your imagination.
You Don't Have To Go Far To Find Your Muse
At a literature festival recently, during the book signing after my talk, a shy young woman waiting in the queue said to me:
For Those Who, Being Poor, Have Only Their Dreams
Happy birthday William Butler Yeats — born on 13th of June 1865.