Imagining Turkey: Elif Shafak in Conversation

Available for over a year

Turkey's best selling female writer, Elif Shafak, has been published in more than 40 countries. Her books, including The Forty Rules of Love, The Bastard of Istanbul and Black Milk - her memoir of motherhood and depression, reflect her interest in building connections between Western and Eastern traditions. Her cosmopolitan voice is of particular importance in a year when the Middle East has been undergoing enormous shifts, and both nationalism and xenophobia are on the rise around the world. She talks to Anne McElvoy about imagination and storytelling as she publishes her new novel The Architect's Apprentice. The conversation was recorded in front of an audience at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival of Ideas at Sage Gateshead in 2014 All the discussions and essays from the Free Thinking festival are available as Radio 3 Arts and Ideas downloads.