Elif Shafak at Edinburgh Book Festival

Eyes rolled when an Edinburgh International Book Festival audience member complimented Elif Shafak on her flawless English.

As if this incredibly intelligent woman wouldn't have been able to master a simple language! Her ability to speak so poetically and lucidly, even in her third language, wasn't what most of the women in the audience were impressed by at the book festival talk on Saturday.

Elif was chatting to journalist, author and broadcaster Sam Baker, about not only her latest book, The Island of Missing Trees (shortlisted last year for the Women’s Prize for Fiction), but much of her portfolio, including The Bastard of Istanbul and?10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World.

Confession time!

I've only read The Island of Missing Trees, and that was because my son bought it for me. I didn't know Elif's writing. Goddamn, I'm going to dig up every word written by her, and lap them up like nectar, like the sustenance I need to survive.

Bit hyperbolic, sorry.

But that's the impression she made! I was sat next to a woman who had travelled through from Glasgow – she had read all Elif's works and giggled like a schoolgirl when she had the chance to ask Elif about the importance of food in her writing and her understanding of culture. I giggled along with the woman next to me, revelling in the light cast by her delight.

(Elif's writing on food is so evocative, so delicious, the reader next to me actually travelled to Cyprus to sample it. Because of Elif.)

Elif spoke of the importance of sharing all stories, the stories of the unheard.?

She said that first-generation immigrants do not have the language to share their stories or their hurts. That the second-generation immigrant is too busy integrating, becoming invisible, to think about their parents' stories or hurts. It is the third- or fourth-generation immigrant who finally asks the big questions and demands to hear the stories.

She spoke of displacement, cultural differences, the importance of art and literature in a world (okay, a country – okay, a government) that places so little faith in their abilities to uplift and educate.

"Everything is political"

she said. The political is personal. If you are concerned about climate change you are concerned about displacement; if you are concerned about displacement you are concerned about gender politics; if you are concerned about gender politics you are concerned about race. Nobody is joining up the dots, Elif said, and it is up to the arts and literature to join the dots.

This was why Elif was so furious about the UK government’s defunding of libraries. It was one of the worst things that could happen because, she believed, none of the audience members would be there, at the book festival, if it wasn’t for libraries.

Lots of nodding heads around me at that point.

One thing that really struck me was that there were so many conversations among complete strangers in the queue to meet Elif afterwards.

Conversations in book festival lines aren’t non-existent, by any means, but I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered such a high degree of chat, and all of it passionately extolling Elif’s virtues. We were all a little bit in love with her, basically.?

And I don’t think she’s the worst human to look up to.

#edbookfest #edbookfest23