Elif Shafak – the universe in the drop

Elif Shafak, they dare in their new novel »The rivers in the sky«A connection from the early days of human history over the 19th century to the present. How difficult was it to combine all of these times?

It was a very elaborate research, but I wrote it with my heart. And even if it looks like a large book because it includes countries, centuries and cultures – everything is connected to this tiny drop of water. I want to see the universe in this drop.

The water as a connecting element between humans.

We tend to think that the water in the Danube, in Tigris or Mississippi is very different. In reality it is the same water that circulates. If we want to understand how connected as humans, we will also understand and understand the climate crisis.

The male main character, Arthur Smyth, not George Smith, the real role model, is a loner who holds his vision against ridicule and defeats. In the 19th century, he decrypted the secrets of the cuneiform writing and solves the riddle and the miracles of Gilgamesh, an original history of humanity. Why is he in focus?

I am interested in people who have been abused and pushed to the edge. I am interested in those who were silenced that were cheated in their lives. I would like to understand these existence.

Then we readers accompany the girl Narin, which in 2014, when the genocide of the Yazidis in Iraq began, flees from terrorist IS fighters. They too one of the forgotten?

Yes. And literature has an astonishing ability to humanize people who have been dehumanized. In this sense, literature is always rebellious. And I like this rebellious side of the literature.

In London we follow the 30-year-old Zaleekah, an idiosyncratic, melancholy woman who studied environmental sciences four years later. It is dedicated to environmental protection and is on the trail of the puzzles of the water. Your literature is political, but they defend themselves against the concept of political literature.

If you come from a wounded democracy like Turkey as a writer, as a novelist, you can’t afford to be out -of -lived. There is politics in my novel. I am also a feminist, for me the personal political is also political. But I don’t like the literature that wants to instruct or sermon. A writer has to ask questions, even difficult questions. And the reader has to find his own answers. For me, literature means: freedom, diversity, nuances.

Is the impression that people are not very interested in history today? For example, why are fake news so powerful in our time?

I differentiate between information, knowledge and wisdom. We live in a world in which we are bombarded with information is not good for us.

What do you suggest?

To achieve knowledge, we do not need a quick shot journalism. For this we need books, literary festivals, intellectual exchange. And to get wisdom, we have to be in conversation with our hearts. Wisdom requires emotional intelligence, empathy. We place too much emphasis on what we call information. We are easily subject to the illusion, we would know about everything.

We don’t know anything.

We forgot to say that I don’t know anything. I don’t know – that was the starting point of philosophy in ancient Greece. We lost humility and curiosity. The lot of information makes us arrogant and ignorant.

How difficult are writers in a male -shaped world?

I love novels that take care of history, philosophy, culture and science, i.e. ideas novels. In the publishing world, however, there is the expectation that an author has to write about domestic topics, for example about marriage and divorce. But I am interested in poverty and the diversity of life. My fiction combines written and oral cultures, the European canon of the novel with rather oral stories from the Balkans, Asia Minor and the Middle East. I want to be a bridge builder.

They have been living in exile for so long. What else does Turkey mean for you these days?

Turkey is my mother country. I have a very emotional connection to people, to culture, women, youth, minorities and history. But as a writer, I need freedom of speech. When I look at politics in Turkey, I am very depressed.

I chose my whereabouts myself. I had to find my voice again. As an author, it would be much easier for me to write in Turkish. That also makes me sad and melancholic. At the same time, writing in English gives me an additional cognitive distance, it gives me an additional feeling of freedom.

You mainly write in English today?

I wrote my earlier novels in Turkish. About 20 years ago I changed language. Since then I’ve been writing mainly in English. But some emotions are easier to express in Turkish, others in English.

Which are they?

Melancholy is easier in Turkish, Hüzün as we call it. But humor that I love is much easier in English, also irony or satire. Longing and grief is easier to express in Turkish.

Many authors are legally persecuted in Turkey, and they were also affected several timesn.

No author of fiction should be brought to court. Yes, I experienced it myself in 2006. It was surreal because the words of fictional characters were on trial. My Turkish lawyer had to defend my Armenian novel figures. Years later I was charged again because of two other novels. On the one hand, I was accused of insulting Turkish, as it is called, and on the other hand, the censors had identified “obscenity” because I wrote about gender -specific violence.

How threatened is democracy in the western world?

We have to fight for freedom of expression. At the end of the 190s and early 2000s there was a lot of optimism in the world. In the media and in science, one spoke of solid and uncertain countries. In the stable countries, in the western world, there is no worry about democracy in order to freedom of expression, the rights of women, human rights. Today we know that there is no such thing as a solid country versus unsafe country. We live in uncertain times. Democracy can also be lost in Europe. We have to be vigilant.

Elif Shafak: The rivers in the sky. Novel. A. d. Engl. V. Michaela Grabinger. Hanser, 592 pages, born, 28 €.