WHATBOOK..?
... are you reading now?
DEEPA ANAPPARA’S gorgeous debut novel Djinn Patrol On The Purple Line. Growing up in India, Anappara worked as a journalist for many years before moving to the UK. She clearly has great knowledge of her motherland, a generous heart, and ability for empathy and a captivating literary style.
A dazzling, wonderful book. I have also just started reading Anne Applebaum’s Twilight Of Democracy: The Failure Of Politics And The Parting Of Friends, written with deep insight, experience and wisdom. Definitely a very important book for understanding our troubled times and the fragility of our democracies.
... would you take to a desert island?
I WISH I could take a library, or a section of a library, with me. If that’s not possible, I think I’d take a dictionary — that way every page, every word, might inspire another story. In the absence of those, I would take Orlando by Virginia Woolf, a book I have read in Turkish and English several times throughout my life, and one that has opened up a whole new world in front of my eyes.
... first gave you the reading bug?
CHARLES DICKENS — especially A Tale Of Two Cities translated into Turkish. I was very young when I read it for the first time, and though I am sure I missed so much of it at the time, its core stayed with me. It also made me understand that via stories I could transcend borders, and I needed to see that. Two more things guided me towards literature: my grandmother’s oral stories, which made me curious about the art of storytelling, and loneliness. I was an only child raised by a single mother and a grandmother in a very patriarchal, conservative society in Turkey. I was an introvert, an observer from an early age, and I always felt I did not exactly belong. So I went within, I went into books. Storyland became my home, my refuge, my motherland.
... left you cold?
THERE are some books that I did not like at first, and could not complete, but then revisited years later and enjoyed reading them. There isn’t really a title that left me cold when I look at all the books that accompanied me over the years.
Every novel that I read widened my horizons, brought me closer to the complexities of human experience.
That said, there are a few terrible publications or manuscripts that have caused immense harm in history. For instance, The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion.
Full of lies and deception, this literary hoax paved the way for the Holocaust.
Another, is The Hammer Of Witches, a medieval text on witchcraft. Hundreds of thousands of innocent women have been stigmatised, incarcerated and killed because of fake witchcraft allegations.
In the modern day, one book that is full of hatred, racism and xenophobia is Jean Raspail’s 1973 novel The Camp Of The Saints, which is sadly today used as a pretext to attack and accuse immigrants.
■ 10 Minutes 38 Seconds In This Strange World by Elif Shafak was shortlisted for last year’s Booker Prize and is out now in paperback (Penguin at £8.99).