Author Guide · Literary Fiction
Books Written by
Elif Shafak was born in Strasbourg in 1971, grew up partly in Ankara and Madrid as the daughter of a diplomat, and took her pen name from her mother’s first name. She writes in both Turkish and English, holds a PhD in political science, and her books have been translated into more than fifty languages. In 2006 she stood trial in Istanbul for “insulting Turkishness” over lines spoken by characters in one of her novels, and was acquitted. Her subjects run from a thirteenth-century Sufi friendship to divided Cyprus and the slums of Istanbul. This guide covers her 13 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 13 key books · 2000–2026 · Updated October 2026
ClickTap a spine to jump to that book below.
Quick answer
Elif Shafak has published more than twenty books, thirteen of them novels. Her best known are The Forty Rules of Love (2009), The Bastard of Istanbul (2006), 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (2019), shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and The Island of Missing Trees (2021). Start with The Forty Rules of Love; below is every key book in order and where each one leads.
Where to Start with Elif Shafak
If you want her most widely read novel
→ The Forty Rules of Love (2009) — Rumi, Shams of Tabriz and a modern marriage.
If you want the novel that put her on trial
→ The Bastard of Istanbul (2006) — two families, one Turkish and one Armenian.
If you want her Booker-shortlisted book
→ 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (2019) — a murdered woman’s last minutes in Istanbul.
If you want her most recent fiction
→ The Island of Missing Trees (2021) — Cyprus in 1974, told partly by a fig tree.
13 Elif Shafak Books, in Order
The Gaze
Published in Turkish as Mahrem in 2000 and in English in 2006. An obese woman and her lover, a dwarf, live in Istanbul, and the novel moves between them and earlier stories about being looked at. It won the Turkish Writers’ Union prize in 2000.
The Flea Palace
First published as Bit Palas in 2002; the English translation followed in 2004. The novel moves flat by flat through the residents of Bonbon Palace, a decaying apartment building in Istanbul, whose separate lives are joined by a mysterious smell of rubbish.
The Saint of Incipient Insanities
Her first novel written in English, published in 2004 and in Turkish as Araf. It follows Turkish graduate student Ömer and his friends in Boston, foreigners and outsiders working out who they are in a country that is not quite theirs.
The Bastard of Istanbul
Published in Turkish as Baba ve Piç in 2006 and in English in 2007. The Kazancı women of Istanbul take in Armanoush, a young Armenian-American from Arizona who has come to find her family’s past, and the two families turn out to be bound by what happened in 1915. Words spoken by Armenian characters led to Shafak’s prosecution in 2006; she was acquitted.
Black Milk
Published in Turkish as Siyah Süt in 2007 and in English in 2011. A memoir of her pregnancy and the postnatal depression that followed the birth of her daughter, told through a chorus of inner voices and the lives of women writers who did, or did not, have children.
The Forty Rules of Love
Published in Turkish as Aşk in 2009 and in English in 2010. Ella, an unhappy American housewife, reads a manuscript about the thirteenth-century friendship between the poet Rumi and the wandering dervish Shams of Tabriz in Konya, and starts writing to its author. The BBC later included it among its 100 Novels that Shaped Our World.
Honour
Published in Turkish as İskender in 2011 and in English in 2012. A Kurdish-Turkish family moves from a village near the Euphrates to London in the 1970s, where the eldest son, Iskender, commits an act of violence in the name of family honour against his mother, Pembe.
The Architect’s Apprentice
Published in Turkish as Ustam ve Ben in 2013 and in English in 2014. Jahan arrives in sixteenth-century Istanbul with a white elephant meant for the sultan and becomes an apprentice to the royal architect Sinan. It was chosen for the Duchess of Cornwall’s first book club, The Reading Room.
Three Daughters of Eve
Peri, a wealthy woman in Istanbul in 2016, is reminded on the way to a dinner party of her student years at Oxford, of her two friends Shirin and Mona, and of a charismatic professor whose seminar on God divided them.
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World
Tequila Leila, a sex worker murdered in Istanbul, is left in a rubbish bin; for ten minutes and thirty-eight seconds her mind goes on working, recalling her life and the five friends she made. It was shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize and the RSL Ondaatje Prize, and named Blackwell’s Book of the Year.
The Island of Missing Trees
Kostas, a Greek Cypriot, and Defne, a Turkish Cypriot, fall in love in Nicosia in 1974 as the island divides; years later their daughter Ada grows up in London knowing almost nothing of it. Part of the story is told by a fig tree. It was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Costa Novel Award and the RSL Ondaatje Prize.
There Are Rivers in the Sky
A single drop of water links three lives across centuries and the rivers Thames and Tigris: a boy from the London slums of the 1840s who learns to read the cuneiform tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh, a Yazidi girl on the Tigris in 2014, and a hydrologist in London in 2018.
In One Brief Moment All Eternity
Elif Shafak retells the life of Gustave Flaubert through the women, real and fictional, who shaped him: a devoted nursemaid, an Egyptian dancer and a jealous lover who refuses to be forgotten. It begins with Emma Bovary, the heroine Flaubert poisoned with arsenic, and moves from his childhood in a house that was part home, part hospital and part morgue, through nineteenth-century Paris to Istanbul, Cairo, Palestine and Beirut. It was published on 15 October 2026.
In What Order to Read Elif Shafak
None of Shafak’s novels continue one another, so you can read them in any order. Publication order shows a clear shift: the early Turkish novels are dense and experimental, mostly set in Istanbul, while from The Bastard of Istanbul on she writes more and more in English, for a wider readership, and her stories travel between Turkey, Britain, America and Cyprus.
Most readers come in through The Forty Rules of Love. From there, The Bastard of Istanbul and The Island of Missing Trees show her favourite subject: the family that inherits a national silence. Save Black Milk for when you want the writer behind the books.
A reading path
1. The Forty Rules of Love (2009)
2. The Bastard of Istanbul (2006)
3. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (2019)
4. The Island of Missing Trees (2021)
5. There Are Rivers in the Sky (2024)
Everything Else Elif Shafak Published
Beyond the 13 key books: 4 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Early work in Turkish
3
3 books · 1994–1999
- 1994Kem Gözlere Anadoluher first book, short stories
- 1997Pinhanher first novel, about a Sufi dervish; won the Mevlana Prize in 1998
- 1999Şehrin Aynalarıa novel set in seventeenth-century Istanbul and Spain
Non-fiction
1
1 book · 2020
- 2020How to Stay Sane in an Age of Divisiona short essay on anxiety, information and listening in divided times
The years · 1971–2024
Quick facts about Elif Shafak
- Known for
- Elif Shafak is known for novels that tell the histories Turkey and its neighbours keep silent about — the Armenians in 1915, divided Cyprus, the women of Istanbul — through the families who inherit them.
- 1971
- Born in Strasbourg, France
- 1998
- Mevlana Prize for Pinhan
- Born
- 25 October 1971, Strasbourg, France
- Languages
- Writes in Turkish and English
- Education
- PhD in political science, Middle East Technical University, Ankara
- Books
- More than twenty, thirteen of them novels, translated into over fifty languages
- Honours
- Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2010); Halldór Laxness International Literature Prize; British Academy President’s Medal (2024)
- Roles
- Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature; honorary fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford
The red mark is 2009: The Forty Rules of Love, her novel about Rumi and Shams of Tabriz.
How Elif Shafak Writes: Stories Told in Many Voices
Shafak builds most of her novels from several voices and timelines that converge. The Forty Rules of Love alternates between a Massachusetts kitchen in 2008 and Konya in the 1240s; There Are Rivers in the Sky threads three lives across almost two centuries; The Flea Palace moves from flat to flat in a single building. She gives voices to unlikely narrators too: a dying woman’s mind in 10 Minutes 38 Seconds, a fig tree in The Island of Missing Trees.
Her recurring subject is memory against forgetting: what families and nations choose not to talk about, whether the events of 1915 in The Bastard of Istanbul, the partition of Cyprus, or violence against women in Honour. Sufism runs through the work from her first novel, Pinhan, to The Forty Rules of Love, and Istanbul itself is close to a character in most of the books.
She is also a political scientist and essayist, and she argues openly that fiction should cross borders. In her 2010 TED talk she warned against “communities of the like-minded” and called storytelling a way out of cultural ghettos. Writing in a second language, English, has been part of that: since 2004 several of her novels have been written in English first and then appeared in Turkish.
Watch
Elif Shafak in Conversation with Christie Watson
Nurse and novelist Christie Watson talks with Elif Shafak about her book How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division, in an event streamed on 8 October 2020. From the official Wellcome Collection channel.
Frequently asked questions about Elif Shafak’s books
How many books has Elif Shafak written?
More than twenty, fourteen of them novels. This page covers her 13 key books, from The Gaze (2000) to In One Brief Moment All Eternity (2026), plus four more in the list above: her early Turkish books Kem Gözlere Anadolu, Pinhan and Şehrin Aynaları, and the essay How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division.
What are Elif Shafak’s books in order?
The Gaze (2000), The Flea Palace (2002), The Saint of Incipient Insanities (2004), The Bastard of Istanbul (2006), Black Milk (2007), The Forty Rules of Love (2009), Honour (2011), The Architect’s Apprentice (2013), Three Daughters of Eve (2016), 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (2019), The Island of Missing Trees (2021), There Are Rivers in the Sky (2024) and In One Brief Moment All Eternity (2026). Years are first editions; several appeared in Turkish a year or more before the English translation.
Where should I start with Elif Shafak?
The Forty Rules of Love, her most widely read novel, about the friendship between Rumi and Shams of Tabriz and an American woman who reads their story. If you prefer contemporary settings, start with The Island of Missing Trees.
What is Elif Shafak’s most famous book?
The Forty Rules of Love (2009; in English 2010), which the BBC included among its 100 Novels that Shaped Our World. The Bastard of Istanbul is the book that brought her international attention, partly because of the 2006 trial.
Why was Elif Shafak put on trial?
In 2006 she was prosecuted under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code for “insulting Turkishness”, because Armenian characters in The Bastard of Istanbul speak of the 1915 killings of Armenians as genocide. The judges acquitted her. She has said she continues to face hostility in Turkey over her work.
Does Elif Shafak write in Turkish or English?
Both. Her early novels were written in Turkish; The Saint of Incipient Insanities (2004) was her first in English, and her recent novels, including The Island of Missing Trees, were written in English first.
Has Elif Shafak won the Booker Prize?
No. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2019. The Island of Missing Trees was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Costa Novel Award.
What is The Forty Rules of Love about?
Two stories in parallel: Ella, a housewife in Massachusetts, reads a manuscript about the poet Rumi and the dervish Shams of Tabriz in thirteenth-century Konya, and begins corresponding with its author. Shams’s forty rules, sayings about love and faith, run through the book.
Is Elif Shafak still alive?
Yes. She was born on 25 October 1971 in Strasbourg, France, and is based in London. Her most recent novel, In One Brief Moment All Eternity, came out in October 2026.
Footnotes
- Elif Şafak — Küre Ansiklopedi
- Elif Shafak — TED speaker page
- The politics of fiction — TED, 2010
- Elif Shafak — Berggruen Institute
- Elif Shafak in conversation with Allan Little — IASH, University of Edinburgh
- Elif Shafak on the politics of fiction — Words Without Borders
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Stories cannot demolish frontiers, but they can punch holes in our mental walls.”
— Elif Shafak, “The politics of fiction”, TEDGlobal (2010)
If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
Browse the full bookshelf Get book recommendations