Why Elif Shafak writes in English and in Turkish

Turkish novelist Elif Shafak, has just published her 8th novel, Black Milk, in Turkish. She explains to Lara Marlowe why she wrote her previous two novels in English. "I wanted to recreate my literary voice in another terrain, in another topography altogether ... [English] is the language of precision. If you are looking for a very precise word, it's out there and all you do is grab it, learn it... [Turkish] is a very emotional language. Especially if you are talking about the past. We have a past tense that doesn't exist in any other language, the masal zaman, the time of tales. It's very elusive. The Turkish language is based on agglutination, like a train, with suffixes being added, one after another. With one suffix in Turkish, you can change the meaning completely. For a writer, that is an amazing exercise."

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