There’s no similar sense of continuity in Turkey. There’s a list of donors who have supported the library there since the 13th century. Turkey is a country of collective amnesia, but in places like Oxford there’s an accumulation of knowledge, a continuity. I also spent a lot of time in Oxford while writing this book. As they came alive, despite their apparent differences, I started to perceive them as more fluid, and wondered if it was possible that they could almost evolve into one another. But I started to perceive them as three different stages that the same person can go through in their life stages where they feel more faithful, or more doubtful. Initially I was thinking of these three girls at Oxford as completely separate personalities. What’s the most surprising thing you learned while writing it? I wanted to bring their voices into the public space and write a book with women in the center. What I wanted to do is reflect the discussions women are having in the private space, debates about faith, sexuality. The problem is we don’t hear their voices much in public spaces. Across the Muslim world, young women are having crucial debates, because the slide backward is so fast in many places, including Turkey, where I come from. And when societies go backward and tumble into isolation and authoritarianism, women have much more to lose. The world we’re living in is a very liquid world. So many things I observed firsthand inspired me. I had been thinking about this book for some time before I started. When did you first get the idea to write this book? Below, she discusses the importance of women’s voices, the artists who helped her find her own confidence and more. For the past eight years, she has divided her time between London and Istanbul. Shafak has lived in many places, including Spain and the United States. Born in France, where her father was studying at the time, Ms. The timely novel explores themes of feminism, religious devotion, secular doubt and political upheaval.
She remembers her time at Oxford in flashbacks throughout the night. “When women remain divided in patriarchal cultures, the only thing that benefits from this is patriarchy.” The novel is anchored in the present day, when Peri, 35, is attending an upper-crust dinner party in Istanbul. “The question I wanted to explore was: Could women so different still be sisters?” Ms. The three Muslim friends who meet at Oxford in the Turkish novelist Elif Shafak’s “Three Daughters of Eve” are described as the Sinner, the Believer and the Confused.
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