Reading List

Authors Like Elif Shafak

Q: What should I read after The Forty Rules of Love?

Amin Maalouf’s Samarkand (1988), which follows a manuscript of Omar Khayyam’s poems across centuries, and then Shafak’s own The Architect’s Apprentice (2014), set in the Istanbul of the architect Mimar Sinan.

Q: Does Elif Shafak have a new book?

Yes. In One Brief Moment All Eternity was published in the UK on 15 October 2026; it is narrated by women, real and invented, who shaped the life of Gustave Flaubert. Her previous novel was There Are Rivers in the Sky (2024).

Q: Which Elif Shafak book should I read first?

The Forty Rules of Love (2010) is her most widely read novel in English. For her most acclaimed, start with 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (2019), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Q: What books are like The Island of Missing Trees?

Victoria Hislop’s The Sunrise (2014), set in Famagusta in 1974, and Louis de Bernières’s Birds Without Wings (2004), about Christian and Muslim neighbours separated by war and the population exchange.

Elif Shafak was born Elif Bilgin in Strasbourg in 1971 and took her mother’s first name, Şafak, meaning “dawn”, as her surname. In 2006 she was prosecuted in Turkey for “insulting Turkishness” because characters in The Bastard of Istanbul spoke about the Armenian genocide; she faced up to three years in prison and was acquitted. Her novels keep returning to what a country prefers to forget: a murdered sex worker whose mind keeps working for ten minutes and thirty-eight seconds after her death, a fig tree narrating the division of Cyprus, a single drop of water travelling from ancient Nineveh to the Thames. She writes in Turkish and English, lives in London, and in October 2026 published In One Brief Moment All Eternity, told by the women around Gustave Flaubert. The ten writers below share her habit of telling a nation’s history through the people it left out.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Literary fiction · History and memory · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love Elif Shafak, start with Orhan Pamuk, whose My Name Is Red also turns Istanbul’s history into a novel of many voices. For a family saga with magic in it, read Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits. For the end of the Ottoman world told through one village, read Louis de Bernières’s Birds Without Wings. The other seven range from a Bosnian Nobel laureate to a Ghanaian-American debut.

10 authors like Elif Shafak

History told by a bridge

Ivo Andrić

Yugoslav · The Bridge on the Drina (1945), Bosnian Chronicle (1945)

Andrić (1892–1975) was born near Travnik in Bosnia, served as a Yugoslav diplomat and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961. The Bridge on the Drina tells nearly four centuries of life in the town of Višegrad through the Ottoman bridge built there in the 1570s, from its construction to the First World War. Some Bosniak critics have argued that his portrayal of Muslims is hostile, and the question is still debated.

The bridge at Višegrad was built for the grand vizier Mehmed Paša Sokolović by Mimar Sinan, the architect at the centre of The Architect’s Apprentice. Andrić, like Shafak, tells history through something that outlasts everyone around it. He is slower and more sombre, and suits readers who want the Ottoman world seen from its edges.

— Lisanne

The family saga as myth

Gabriel García Márquez

Colombian · One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)

García Márquez (1927–2014) was born in Aracataca, Colombia, and worked as a journalist before One Hundred Years of Solitude, which follows generations of the Buendía family in the invented town of Macondo. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982, and a last short novel, Until August, was published after his death, in 2024.

The model for the magical touches in Shafak’s fiction, where a tree can narrate and a dead woman can remember. Both write family history as a way of writing national history, and both let the impossible sit beside the political without explanation.

— Lisanne

Istanbul, seen another way

Orhan Pamuk

Turkish · My Name Is Red (1998), Snow (2002), The Museum of Innocence (2008)

Pamuk was born in Istanbul in 1952 and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006. My Name Is Red is a murder mystery among Ottoman miniaturists in 1591, told by many narrators including a corpse, a coin and the colour red. In 2005 he was charged with “insulting Turkishness” after telling a Swiss newspaper that Armenians and Kurds had been killed in Turkey; the charges were dropped.

The other great novelist of Istanbul, and the one Shafak is most often compared with. Both write many-voiced historical novels and both were prosecuted under the same law, but Pamuk’s Istanbul is male, melancholy and inward, where Shafak’s is loud, female and full of outsiders. Read My Name Is Red beside The Architect’s Apprentice.

— Lisanne

Women carrying a family’s memory

Isabel Allende

Chilean-American · The House of the Spirits (1982), Eva Luna (1987)

Allende was born in Lima in 1942 to Chilean parents and left Chile after the 1973 coup, in which her father’s cousin, President Salvador Allende, died. The House of the Spirits began as a letter to her dying grandfather and follows several generations of the Trueba family, with the women at its centre, up to a military coup.

Allende and Shafak both write political history through the women of a family, mixing ghosts and clairvoyance with real coups and real violence. The House of the Spirits is a natural next book after The Bastard of Istanbul, where a family’s women also hold what the country will not say.

— Lisanne

Every book by Isabel Allende →

East and West in one life

Amin Maalouf

Lebanese-French · Leo Africanus (1986), Samarkand (1988), In the Name of Identity (1998)

Maalouf was born in Beirut in 1949, worked as a journalist and moved to France during the Lebanese civil war. Leo Africanus is the imagined memoir of a real sixteenth-century traveller born in Granada, captured by pirates and presented to a pope; Samarkand follows a manuscript of Omar Khayyam’s poems across nine centuries. He won the Prix Goncourt in 1993 and became permanent secretary of the Académie française in 2023.

Maalouf shares Shafak’s ground almost exactly: Islamic history, travellers between faiths, and the conviction that identity is plural. Samarkand, with its Persian poet and lost manuscript, sits naturally beside The Forty Rules of Love, and In the Name of Identity is the essay behind both writers’ novels.

— Lisanne

A nation in a crowded voice

Salman Rushdie

British-American, born in India · Midnight’s Children (1981), The Satanic Verses (1988), Knife (2024)

Rushdie was born in Bombay in 1947. Midnight’s Children, narrated by a boy born at the moment of India’s independence, won the Booker Prize. After The Satanic Verses, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for his death in 1989, and in 2022 he was stabbed on stage in New York State, an attack he wrote about in Knife.

Rushdie and Shafak both write the migrant’s double vision, with history told through crowded, digressive storytelling and magic used for political ends. Both have also lived with official hostility to their books. Rushdie is more exuberant and more comic; start with Midnight’s Children.

— Lisanne

Every book by Salman Rushdie →

A family, a caste line, a broken law

Arundhati Roy

Indian · The God of Small Things (1997), The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017), Mother Mary Comes to Me (2025)

Roy was born in Shillong in 1961 and grew up in Kerala. The God of Small Things, about the twins Estha and Rahel and the forbidden love affair that destroys their family in Ayemenem, won the Booker Prize. She spent twenty years mostly writing political essays before The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and in 2025 published Mother Mary Comes to Me, a memoir of her mother.

Roy, like Shafak in Honour, writes about a family that destroys its own to enforce an older code. Both also write openly political non-fiction alongside their novels. Roy plays more with language; The God of Small Things suits readers who loved The Island of Missing Trees.

— Lisanne

Every book by Arundhati Roy →

The Ottoman end, from a village

Louis de Bernières

British · Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (1994), Birds Without Wings (2004)

De Bernières was born in London in 1954. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin is set on the Greek island of Cephalonia under Italian occupation in the Second World War. Birds Without Wings follows the Muslim and Christian neighbours of a small village in south-west Anatolia through the First World War, Gallipoli and the population exchange that separated them.

The closest novel in English to Shafak’s subject of neighbours split by nationalism: Greeks and Turks, Christians and Muslims who once shared a village. It sits next to The Island of Missing Trees, written from outside by a British novelist with Shafak’s taste for many voices.

— Lisanne

Cyprus, divided

Victoria Hislop

British · The Island (2005), The Sunrise (2014)

Hislop was born in 1959, worked in publishing and journalism, and holds British and Greek citizenship; Greece made her an honorary citizen in 2020. The Island is set around Spinalonga, the former leper colony off Crete. The Sunrise follows Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot families in the resort of Famagusta in 1974.

The most accessible companion to The Island of Missing Trees: the same 1974 division of Cyprus, seen through Greek and Turkish families on opposite sides. Hislop’s books are more straightforward page-turners than Shafak’s, which makes them a good choice for book clubs.

— Lisanne

Generations that history split

Yaa Gyasi

Ghanaian-American · Homegoing (2016), Transcendent Kingdom (2020)

Gyasi was born in Mampong, Ghana, in 1989 and grew up in Huntsville, Alabama. Homegoing follows the descendants of two half-sisters in the eighteenth-century Gold Coast, one married to a British slaver at Cape Coast Castle and one sold into slavery from its dungeons, chapter by chapter across three hundred years.

Gyasi shares Shafak’s structure of history told one voice at a time and her interest in descendants who inherit a silence, here the Atlantic slave trade rather than 1915 or 1974. A strong choice for readers who liked the generational sweep of The Bastard of Istanbul.

— Lisanne

Every book by Yaa Gyasi →

Where to start if you loved Elif Shafak

If you loved The Forty Rules of Love, read Amin Maalouf.

Samarkand: a Persian poet, a lost manuscript and nine centuries of East meeting West.

If you loved The Architect’s Apprentice, read Ivo Andrić.

The Bridge on the Drina: four centuries of a Bosnian town told through a bridge built by Mimar Sinan.

If you loved The Island of Missing Trees, read Victoria Hislop.

The Sunrise: Greek and Turkish Cypriot families in Famagusta in 1974.

If you want her Istanbul from another angle, read Orhan Pamuk.

My Name Is Red: Ottoman painters, a murder and a crowd of narrators.

If you want more Elif Shafak, start with her newest.

In One Brief Moment All Eternity (2026) is told by the women around Flaubert; then go back to 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (2019) and The Bastard of Istanbul.

Frequently asked questions about authors like Elif Shafak

Who writes like Elif Shafak?

Orhan Pamuk is the closest for Istanbul and many-voiced history, Isabel Allende for family sagas with magic in them, and Louis de Bernières for neighbours divided at the end of the Ottoman empire. Amin Maalouf is the best match for The Forty Rules of Love.

What should I read after The Forty Rules of Love?

Amin Maalouf’s Samarkand (1988), which follows a manuscript of Omar Khayyam’s poems across centuries, and then Shafak’s own The Architect’s Apprentice (2014), set in the Istanbul of the architect Mimar Sinan.

Does Elif Shafak have a new book?

Yes. In One Brief Moment All Eternity was published in the UK on 15 October 2026; it is narrated by women, real and invented, who shaped the life of Gustave Flaubert. Her previous novel was There Are Rivers in the Sky (2024).

Which Elif Shafak book should I read first?

The Forty Rules of Love (2010) is her most widely read novel in English. For her most acclaimed, start with 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (2019), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Is Elif Shafak like Orhan Pamuk?

Both are Turkish novelists of Istanbul who write many-voiced historical fiction, and both were prosecuted for “insulting Turkishness”. Pamuk’s books are more inward and melancholy; Shafak’s centre women, minorities and outsiders.

What books are like The Island of Missing Trees?

Victoria Hislop’s The Sunrise (2014), set in Famagusta in 1974, and Louis de Bernières’s Birds Without Wings (2004), about Christian and Muslim neighbours separated by war and the population exchange.

Sources

List last reviewed 30 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

Authors Like Elif Shafak

10 authors like Elif Shafak

Ivo Andrić

Gabriel García Márquez

Orhan Pamuk

Isabel Allende

Amin Maalouf

Salman Rushdie

Arundhati Roy

Louis de Bernières

Victoria Hislop

Yaa Gyasi

Where to start if you loved Elif Shafak

Frequently asked questions about authors like Elif Shafak

Who writes like Elif Shafak?

What should I read after The Forty Rules of Love?

Does Elif Shafak have a new book?

Which Elif Shafak book should I read first?

Is Elif Shafak like Orhan Pamuk?

What books are like The Island of Missing Trees?

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