Better to have a benevolent dictatorship. And some of them are saying, democracy, we don't really need that. And there is a passage where the people who are quite elite are discussing democracy. So a lot of this novel takes place in a dinner party in Istanbul. Almost the first thing that happens is she is robbed and sexually assaulted on the streets, yet she overcomes her attacker and continues on to a scheduled dinner where she tries to pretend that nothing at all has gone wrong. It's called "Three Daughters of Eve." The main character is a woman in her mid-30s. Elif Shafak's new novel is largely set in Istanbul. INSKEEP: She was there in recent years as Turkey's leader took over newspapers and arrested opposition figures. SHAFAK: In countries where there's no freedom of speech, ironically, sometimes words matter even more. She spends more time in London and sometimes the United States, yet Elif Shafak says she's been drawn back again and again to her former home of Istanbul on the dividing line between Europe and Asia. STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: She doesn't live full-time in Turkey anymore. She discussed her new novel with our co-host Steve Inskeep. Shafak herself was once put on trial in Turkey for writing about a sensitive subject. People pass books from hand to hand, and writers keep writing them despite the danger. GREENE: She says, in Turkey, the act of writing is a risk. And then I would miss the city and come back. The writer Elif Shafak tells stories of Istanbul, Turkey, a city she used to call home.ĮLIF SHAFAK: Almost like a pendulum, I would leave, and then I would miss the city.
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