Source: Guardian >> Read full article and comment

Novelist Elif Shafak grew up with two very different models of Turkish motherhood – her modern, working, educated mother and her traditional, religious grandmother

By Rebecca Abrams

Saturday 19 June 2010

Three months before her first child was born, Elif Shafak, Turkey’s leading female novelist, found herself facing prosecution and a potential three-year prison sentence. Her crime? She was accused of insulting “Turkishness” in her novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, through a fictional character whose ancestors had been murdered in the Armenian genocide.

On the day of the trial, protesters inside and outside the courtroom jostled and slapped at the defendants – dozens of Turkish writers and intellectuals – shouting and throwing objects at them. “More disturbing than the actual trial,” Shafak said at the time. “Very aggressive, very provocative.”..Continue reading