207.05.28 土耳其作家埃利夫-沙法克

shiyi18

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the Turkish writer Elif Shafak.

Elif Shafak has published ten novels and several volumes of non-fiction and her work is translated into 47 languages. She is the most widely read female novelist in Turkey today.

Born in 1971, she was raised by a single working mother and also, for the first ten years of her life, by her grandmother in Ankara. Her mother's job as a diplomat led to a move to Madrid when Elif was ten years old - and so began a peripatetic life which has taken her to places as diverse as Jordan and Germany, the United States and finally to London where she has lived for the past seven years.

Elif wrote her first novels in Turkish, but began writing in English shortly after the start of the new millennium. English, she says, has given her a new freedom to write about sensitive issues in Turkey. Her books draw on diverse cultures and reflect her interest in history, philosophy, spiritualism and Sufism. One commentator has said of her work: "Stepping into the writing of this Turkish-born author for the first time is like breaking through the back of a children's wardrobe and walking into a whole new multicultural world of lives and histories - and, above all, fabulous stories."

She is a regular columnist both for English as well as Turkish papers and also writes lyrics for rock musicians.



土耳其作家埃利夫-沙法克。

Elif Shafak已经出版了10部小说和几卷非小说，她的作品被翻译成47种语言。她是当今土耳其读者最多的女小说家。

她出生于1971年，由一个单身的工作母亲抚养长大，在她生命的前十年，也是由安卡拉的祖母抚养。她的母亲是一名外交官，在埃利夫10岁时，她搬到了马德里，从此开始了她的流浪生活，她的足迹遍布约旦、德国、美国等地，最后来到伦敦，在那里生活了7年。

埃利夫用土耳其语写了她的第一部小说，但在新千年开始后不久就开始用英语写作。她说，英语给了她一种新的自由，让她可以写土耳其的敏感问题。她的书借鉴了不同的文化，反映了她对历史、哲学、精神主义和苏菲主义的兴趣。一位评论家曾这样评价她的作品。"第一次踏入这位土耳其出生的作家的作品，就像突破了儿童衣柜的后面，走进了一个全新的多文化的生活和历史的世界--最重要的是，还有美妙的故事。

她是英语和土耳其语报纸的定期专栏作家，还为摇滚音乐家写歌词。