Diesel, A Bookstore in Brentwood is excited to welcome Elif Shafak to the store to discuss and sign her newest book The Forty Rules of Love on Wednesday, March 3rd, at 7pm.

Elif Shafak (spelled Şafak in Turkish) was born in 1971 in Strasbourg, France. She is an award-winning novelist and the most widely read woman writer in Turkey. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Throughout her life, Shafak has lived in cities and states all over the world including Madrid, Spain; Ankara, Turkey; Cologne, Germany; Amman, Jordan; Boston, Massachusetts; Michigan; and Arizona. Through it all she has maintained a deep attachment to the city of Istanbul, which plays an important part in her fiction. As a result, a sense of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism has consistently characterized both her life and her work.

Shafak has published nine books, seven of which are novels. She writes in both Turkish and English. In Turkey, her latest novel, The Forty Rules of Love, instantly became a number one bestseller after selling more than 150,000 copies in a month. The novel is a modern love story between a Jewish-American housewife and a modern Sufi living in Amsterdam. Their unusual romance is interwoven with the remarkable spiritual bond between Rumi and Shams of Tabriz. Sufism has always played an important role in Shafak’s writing, but it was in this book that she dealt with the subject directly.

The Bastard of Istanbul (Paperback)

By Elif Shafak

$14.00

ISBN-13: 9780143112716
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Penguin (Non-Classics), 02/01/2008

When The Bastard of Istanbul was published in Turkey, Elif Shafak was accused by nationalist lawyers of insulting Turkish identity. The charges were later dropped, and now readers in America can discover for themselves this bold and powerful tale. Populated with vibrant characters, The Bastard of Istanbul is the story of two families, one Turkish and one Armenian American, and their struggle to forge their unique identities against the backdrop of Turkey's violent history. Filled with humor and understanding, this exuberant, dramatic novel is about memory and forgetting, about the tension between the need to examine the past and the desire to erase it.

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The Saint of Incipient Insanities (Hardcover)

By Elif Shafak

$25.00

ISBN-13: 9780374253578
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 10/01/2004

The Saint of Incipient Insanities is the comic and heartbreaking story of a group of twenty-something friends, and their never-ending quest for fulfillment. Omer, Abed and Piyu are roommates, foreigners all recently arrived in the United States. Omer, from Istanbul, is a Ph.D. student in political science who adapts quickly to his new home, and falls in love with the bisexual, suicidal, intellectual chocolate maker Gail. Gail is American yet feels utterly displaced in her homeland and moves from one obsession to another in an effort to find solid ground. Abed pursues a degree in biotechnology, worries about Omer's unruly ways, his mother's unexpected visit, and stereotypes of Arabs in America; he struggles to maintain a connection with his girlfriend back home in Morocco. Piyu is a Spaniard, who is studying to be a dentist in spite of his fear of sharp objects, and is baffled by the many relatives of his Mexican-American girlfriend, Algre, and in many ways by Algre herself. Keenly insightful and sharply humorous, The Saint of Incipient Insanities is a vibrant exploration of love, friendship, culture, nationality, exile and belonging.

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The Gaze (Paperback)

By Elif Shafak

$14.95

ISBN-13: 9780714531212
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Marion Boyars Publishers, 07/01/2006

"An enchanting combination of compassion and crueltyElif Shafak is the best author to come out of Turkey in the last decade."-Orhan Pamuk A new title from the author of "The Flea Palace," shortlisted for the Independent Prize for Foreign Fiction and chosen for Waterstone's 2005 Summer Reading promotion. In her prize-wining novel, "The Gaze," Shafak explores the subject of body image and desirability. An overweight woman and her lover, a dwarf, are sick of being stared at wherever they go, and decide to reverse roles. The man goes out wearing make up, and the woman draws a moustache on her face. The couple deal with the gaze of passers by in different ways. The woman wants to hide away from the world, while the man meets them head on, even compiling his own 'Dictionary of the Gaze' to show the powerful effects a simple look can have. The narrative of "The Gaze" is intertwined with the dwarf's dictionary entries and the story of a bizarre freak-show organized in Istanbul in the 1880s as Shafak explores the damage which can be done by our simple desire to look at other people.

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