Anthologies#
| Title |
Published |
Buy on Amazon |
| 1914 - Goodbye to All That |
2014 |
Buy |
| Freeman’s Power |
2018 |
Buy |
Non-Fiction#
| Title |
Published |
Buy on Amazon |
| Black Milk |
2007 |
Buy |
| The Happiness of Blond People |
2011 |
Buy |
Standalone Novels#
| Title |
Published |
Buy on Amazon |
| The Gaze |
1999 |
Buy |
| The Flea Palace |
2002 |
Buy |
| The Saint of Incipient Insanities |
2004 |
Buy |
| The Bastard of Istanbul |
2006 |
Buy |
| The Forty Rules of Love |
2009 |
Buy |
| Honour |
2012 |
Buy |
| The Architect’s Apprentice |
2013 |
Buy |
| Three Daughters of Eve |
2016 |
Buy |
| 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World |
2019 |
Buy |
| The Island of Missing Trees |
2021 |
Buy |
| There Are Rivers in the Sky |
2024 |
Buy |
Elif Shafak is a Turkish-British novelist whose fiction moves between Istanbul and the wider world. She has published eleven novels since 1999, along with non-fiction and anthology contributions. Her best-known works include The Bastard of Istanbul (2006), which caused a legal controversy in Turkey for its portrayal of the Armenian genocide, and The Forty Rules of Love (2009), a dual-timeline novel connecting a contemporary American woman to the thirteenth-century poet Rumi and his companion Shams of Tabriz.
Shafak writes about identity, belonging, and the spaces between cultures. Her novels are set across centuries and continents — Ottoman Istanbul, modern-day London, a Mediterranean island — but they return consistently to questions about what holds communities together and what drives them apart. She writes in both Turkish and English, and her work has been translated into more than fifty languages.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many books has Elif Shafak written?
Elif Shafak has written fifteen books across three series.
What was Elif Shafak's first book?
Elif Shafak’s first book is The Gaze, published in 1999.
In what languages does Elif Shafak write?
Shafak writes in both Turkish and English. Some of her earlier novels were written in Turkish and later translated, while her more recent work has been written directly in English. This bilingual practice reflects the cross-cultural identity that runs through all of her fiction.