Speaker 1: I think as writers we need to be two things
Speaker 1: all our lives. We need to be good readers, and
Speaker 1: we must read from across the board fiction and nonfiction, east, West,
Speaker 1: north and south, not only eurocentric literature.
Speaker 2: And secondly, we need to be very good listeners.
Speaker 1: And by that I mean we need to listen to
Speaker 1: what people are saying, but also with what kind of
Speaker 1: emotions they're saying what they're saying. That means we have
Speaker 1: to pay attention to the gaps between the words, those
Speaker 1: little silences, those buried emotions matter a lot.
Speaker 2: To me as a writer.
Speaker 3: Obviously, I am someone who adores getting the chance to
Speaker 3: sit and chat with an author, but I've got to
Speaker 3: say talking with Elif Shaffolk might be a particular tonic.
Speaker 3: I first got the interviewer a few years ago for
Speaker 3: an event at Adelaide Writer's WAK. She was on a screen,
Speaker 3: appearing remotely, but her warmth and ability to draw the
Speaker 3: audience in her mix of seriousness and generosity that she
Speaker 3: radiated when she talked made for a completely captivating event.
Speaker 3: Part of it is about how much her readers love
Speaker 3: her books. She's written more than twenty of them at
Speaker 3: this stage, and they range across folklore and trauma, across
Speaker 3: a passion for human rights and a reverence for story.
Speaker 3: It plays up particularly acutely for me and what I
Speaker 3: think is my favorite of her novels, the twenty nineteen
Speaker 3: book Ten Minutes, thirty eight Seconds In This Strange World.
Speaker 3: It's an incredibly powerful story of a murdered sex worker,
Speaker 3: but has this kind of rare beauty as she contemplates
Speaker 3: her life in her final moments as the sun rises
Speaker 3: above Istanbul. It was shortlisted for the Book of Prize
Speaker 3: the year it came out, and the thing that really
Speaker 3: strikes you when you hear her talk is how much
Speaker 3: Eliv Chafe cares about writing, not just about her own writing,
Speaker 3: but about writing as this transformative art form, one that
Speaker 3: enables us to build connections and empathy. She's a self
Speaker 3: described citizen of the world following several decades as a
Speaker 3: professor of political science, women's and cultural studies, and she's
Speaker 3: become this notable public intellectual and human rights activist, espousing
Speaker 3: the importance of literature and speech. At the Book of
Speaker 3: Prize ceremony in twenty twenty two, she spoke particularly powerfully
Speaker 3: in reference to the attack on someone Rushti in New
Speaker 3: York earlier that year, she said the literary imagination is
Speaker 3: one of our last remaining democratic spaces. And she has
Speaker 3: a new book just hit the bookshops, And once again,
Speaker 3: Elif Shafak is using the democratic space she has created
Speaker 3: with her singular literary imagination to tie together our past
Speaker 3: and our future, our politics, and our humanity in singular
Speaker 3: and indelible ways. I'm Michael Williams, and this is read
Speaker 3: this to show about the books we love and the
Speaker 3: stories behind Elif Shaffak's latest novel. There are Rivers in
Speaker 3: the sky stretches across millennia following a single drop of water.
Speaker 3: Much as she did with the connective tissue of Trees
Speaker 3: in her last novel, Elif explores the long memory of
Speaker 3: the natural world alongside the relentless forgetting of civilizations. Her
Speaker 3: drop of water is present at the building of a
Speaker 3: great library, witnessing the saving of the Epic of Gilgamesh
Speaker 3: from destruction for blasphemy. Much later, in nineteenth century Constantinople
Speaker 3: it lands on Arthur, who's just arrived on an official
Speaker 3: mission to find a missing section of the epic that
Speaker 3: depicts a pre biblical flood and in its third and
Speaker 3: final incarnation, the drop of water is the last in
Speaker 3: a bottle carried by twenty first century Yazidis who are
Speaker 3: fleeing from violent persecution into the mountains of Irak. As.
Speaker 3: With so much of Elif's fiction, there are these multiple
Speaker 3: narratives converging to tell this larger story about connection and
Speaker 3: about climate, and she explained when we sat down for
Speaker 3: our conversation, it.
Speaker 1: Is a story of three characters who seem to be
Speaker 1: completely different at first glance, and two rivers, the River
Speaker 1: Thames and the River Tigris in the Middle East, and
Speaker 1: then one ancient poem, which is the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Speaker 2: So three two one.
Speaker 1: But everything in this seemingly complex structure is actually based
Speaker 1: on a single small drop of water. It is water
Speaker 1: that connects everything. And I think the moment we forget
Speaker 1: how connected we are, we only need to look at
Speaker 1: the journey of water, because it's the ultimate immigrant in
Speaker 1: a way, and it connects us and the water that
Speaker 1: flows in the River Thames and the River Tigris, or
Speaker 1: the water in our glass, the water inside us, the
Speaker 1: tears that we shed, they're all the same water circulating.
Speaker 1: So it is a book that to connect seemingly different
Speaker 1: pieces and destinies, but I genuinely believe as human beings
Speaker 1: we are all deeply interconnected.
Speaker 4: A cape.
Speaker 3: Part of that interconnection in this book centers around a text,
Speaker 3: the Epic of Gilgamesh, and I wanted to ask whether
Speaker 3: you remember when you first came across that book.
Speaker 1: I do roughly remember because I was in Turkey. I
Speaker 1: was a student in Turkey. But to be honest, that
Speaker 1: introduction was incredibly limited. All you know is just as
Speaker 1: it was an ancient poem and there was a hero
Speaker 1: in it, and that hero had some adventures and journeys.
Speaker 2: That's about it. Really.
Speaker 1: It took me years and years to dive deep. And
Speaker 1: then many years later I revisited the epic, but this
Speaker 1: time with a completely different eyes. And then the third reading,
Speaker 1: which was the real reading. That one really really changed
Speaker 1: me because what I found in the Epic was a
Speaker 1: story that is quite relevant to our times, that is
Speaker 1: universally important. It is almost timeless. It's a story that
Speaker 1: does not have a hero in a traditional sense. If anything,
Speaker 1: it has an anti hero because Gilgemus is a terrible
Speaker 1: person at the beginning of the story. You cannot like him,
Speaker 1: but through losses, grief, journeys, friendship, but also failure. By
Speaker 1: the time he comes back, he has not achieved anything.
Speaker 1: He has failed in everything. Through all of that, he
Speaker 1: changes and he becomes a wiser person. But also it's
Speaker 1: a story about climate crisis, about the search for youth immortality,
Speaker 1: you know, how do we deal with aging process? And
Speaker 1: I think it's a story about power, how power corrupts
Speaker 1: so in so many ways. I find it a very
Speaker 1: very important and almost urgent and universal story.
Speaker 3: Does seem to me that as your work has developed
Speaker 3: from book to book, your love for your fascination with
Speaker 3: the natural world is something that has become increasingly to
Speaker 3: the fore that it's there even in your earliest works.
Speaker 3: But it seems to me, particularly in the last two
Speaker 3: or three, the ways in which we might better understand
Speaker 3: our human relationships if we were more open to understanding
Speaker 3: the relationship between elements of the natural world is a
Speaker 3: kind of recurring theme for you, and I'd love you
Speaker 3: to share with us how that passion, how that kind
Speaker 3: of focus came about for you.
Speaker 2: That is so correct.
Speaker 1: I think I'm also very interested in eco feminism, the
Speaker 1: kind of feminism that connects the thoughts. There are several
Speaker 1: threads that come together when we talk about nature and literature,
Speaker 1: And you're right, my interest in nature is increasing as
Speaker 1: I get older and also older as a writer as well.
Speaker 2: But I think basically what I would like to we.
Speaker 1: Mind, myself and everyone is that we tend to think
Speaker 1: we are above the nature, that we are superior to
Speaker 1: everything else, because we think we're very clever as human beings,
Speaker 1: and we have turned ourselves into consumers of nature.
Speaker 2: That is our basic.
Speaker 1: Relationship with the things around us, and that is a
Speaker 1: completely wrong and destructive relationship. We're destroying an entire ecosystem,
Speaker 1: and as we do this, we're destroying ourselves. So a
Speaker 1: different way of thinking which is actually not new but
Speaker 1: quite ancient, and many indigenous tribes, many ancient spiritual systems
Speaker 1: knew this. They were telling us that we are not
Speaker 1: above nature, but just a small part of a very
Speaker 1: delicate ecosystem. And you need to respect the trees, you
Speaker 1: need to respect the earth, you need to respect water.
Speaker 1: So we need to rewire our brains and rewire our
Speaker 1: relationship with nature. I believe that is an important part
Speaker 1: of my work.
Speaker 3: What do you see is the relationship between that work
Speaker 3: and that subject, that area, and the business of literature itself,
Speaker 3: because it seems to me there's something very fraud about
Speaker 3: applying words to natural phenomenon, to natural ideas, to ancient concepts,
Speaker 3: where they run the risk of feeling inadequate or incapable
Speaker 3: of capturing the kind of richness of the natural world.
Speaker 3: And I know in your career there was a point
Speaker 3: at which you made the shift from writing your books
Speaker 3: in Turkish first to writing them in English first. And
Speaker 3: I've heard you talk about the way in which you
Speaker 3: can dream in multiple languages, But do you commune with
Speaker 3: nature in the same way in English and in Turkish?
Speaker 3: Does one language find the rhythms more readily for you?
Speaker 2: That is such a brilliant question. And you made me
Speaker 2: think more deep there. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I think I need to go back to my childhood.
Speaker 1: I was raised by a grandmother in Turkey. It was
Speaker 1: very spiritual, you know, in her own way. She was
Speaker 1: not religious, but she was spiritual. And in her own world,
Speaker 1: my grandmother was an oral storyteller. In her world, the
Speaker 1: mountains would speak, the trees would whisper, you know, water
Speaker 1: would say things, and that was okay, that was not madness.
Speaker 1: There are these kinds of stories in Anatolia, in the Balkans,
Speaker 1: in the Middle East. I have never forgotten that, and
Speaker 1: it paints me that oral culture in general is looked
Speaker 1: down upon it because it's regarded as not intellectual enough.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I've heard people say things like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: just you know, tales by ignorant housewives.
Speaker 2: I've heard these things.
Speaker 1: So there's a part of me that wants to also
Speaker 1: take the wisdom because there are so many pockets of
Speaker 1: wisdom within oral culture.
Speaker 2: That we need to tap into.
Speaker 1: So I want to bring those pockets of wisdom and
Speaker 1: connect them with riten culture, or in other words, I
Speaker 1: would love my writing, to the best of my ability,
Speaker 1: bridge oral culture and written culture, because even when we
Speaker 1: talk about seemingly irrational things such as superstitions, there's a
Speaker 1: reason why those superstitions are there. You know, they reflect
Speaker 1: our most basic fears as human beings. There's something existential there.
Speaker 1: So I do pay attention to different ways of storytelling,
Speaker 1: not only to the European canon of the novel, as
Speaker 1: much as I love it, I am also connected to
Speaker 1: different types of storytelling, much more cyclical, much more oral storytelling,
Speaker 1: you know, with regards to language. It's a big, big
Speaker 1: question for me, because language is a huge passion. I
Speaker 1: do not see it as an instrument that I use
Speaker 1: and then put aside. I think languages shape us. We
Speaker 1: breathe them, and you know, we dream in them. But
Speaker 1: at the same time as you can hear in my
Speaker 1: and in my mispronunciation, I am not a native speaker
Speaker 1: in English. This is an acquired language for me. I'm
Speaker 1: an immigrant not only in England in the UK, but
Speaker 1: also inside English language, and as a result of which
Speaker 1: I will always experience this immigrant anxiety. There is a
Speaker 1: gap between the mind and the tongue. The mind always
Speaker 1: runs faster, so you're as immigrants. You're always aware of
Speaker 1: the things that you're not able to say instead of
Speaker 1: the things that you are able to say. But I
Speaker 1: love it. I love writing in English. It gave me
Speaker 1: an existential freedom, perhaps an additional sense of freedom. Being
Speaker 1: a Turkish writer is sometimes very heavy, and being a
Speaker 1: Turkish novelist, female novelist can be heavier. So when I
Speaker 1: write in English, I find another cognitive distance, and that
Speaker 1: distance helps me to feel lighter and with that lifeess
Speaker 1: I can maybe delve into more difficult subjects with a
Speaker 1: little bit more hutzvah, you know.
Speaker 2: So that's my relationship.
Speaker 1: Of course, my relationship with Turkish is more emotional, with
Speaker 1: English more intellectual. But in a nutshell, all I can
Speaker 1: tell is still to this day, if my writing has melancholy, sorrow, longing, sadness,
Speaker 1: I find these things much easier to express in Turkish.
Speaker 2: But when it comes to.
Speaker 1: Humor, which I love, irony and satire are much easier
Speaker 1: in English.
Speaker 3: I just want to pick up on making the point
Speaker 3: about recognizing the oral traditions beyond just that kind of
Speaker 3: European traditions of literature. And it seems to me that
Speaker 3: perhaps a writer of Turkish heritage is singularly well placed
Speaker 3: for that multiplicity of influence. But of course modern Turkey
Speaker 3: is very uneasy with that duality. Does that represent a
Speaker 3: kind of additional thing to navigate?
Speaker 2: That is so true?
Speaker 1: I mean, Turkey in so many ways is a place
Speaker 1: of in between them. It's a very liquid city. It's
Speaker 1: constantly becoming shifting, it hasn't settled yet, even though it's
Speaker 1: a very very old city. And that liquid world is
Speaker 1: something that always makes me think more carefully about memory, identity, heritage, ancestors.
Speaker 1: What does it mean to be from the east or
Speaker 1: from the West. I think for a long time with
Speaker 1: good intentions, no doubt, but many people in media and
Speaker 1: academia adopted a very dualistic approach. They thought that some
Speaker 1: countries were quite solid and safe and steady, and that
Speaker 1: was the Western world. And they also thought that in
Speaker 1: those solid countries, democracy had been achieved, women's rights had
Speaker 1: been achieved, LGBTQ rights had been already achieved, so you
Speaker 1: didn't have to worry at all about the future of democracy.
Speaker 1: But it was the liquid countries over there outside the
Speaker 1: Western world that had to worry about such things.
Speaker 2: Now fast forwards, in the year twenty.
Speaker 1: Twenty four, we do know that there's no such thing
Speaker 1: as solid countries versus liquid countries, and we're all living
Speaker 1: in liquid times. And even in those countries that seem
Speaker 1: so solid, actually things can go backwards, and it can
Speaker 1: happen very fast, So we all need to worry about
Speaker 1: the future of our democracies.
Speaker 3: After the break, Elif reveals the Virginia Wolf novel, which
Speaker 3: she returns to again and again.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back.
Speaker 3: The Financial Times called the Elif Shafak, one of Turkey's
Speaker 3: most important writers. But back in two thousand and six
Speaker 3: her book The Bastard of Istanbul, Soryerlift prosecuted for the
Speaker 3: crime of insulting Turkishness. Those She has later acquitted and
Speaker 3: has received a lot of support from Turkish readers. Elf
Speaker 3: and her family were forced into voluntary exile in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 3: They're now based in London. This sense of displacement runs
Speaker 3: through all of her work, and it's especially present in
Speaker 3: There Are Rivers in the Sky. How do you manage
Speaker 3: to scaffold the extent to which grief and anger, at
Speaker 3: the nature of loss and exile they inform your work,
Speaker 3: but they don't overwhelm your work. And I'm interested in
Speaker 3: whether that's a discipline you have to apply, whether you
Speaker 3: have to say, I see that's there, and I'm going
Speaker 3: to leave that at the door, or I'm going to
Speaker 3: make that the focus here because it's in everything you write,
Speaker 3: but it's handled with such grace.
Speaker 1: That's an amazing question. Stranger to anger, depression, anxiety. I
Speaker 1: think we need to talk about these things also mental health.
Speaker 1: How do we struggle with difficult emotions, exile, not being
Speaker 1: able to go back, it makes it harder. At the
Speaker 1: same time, I have found a home in the UK
Speaker 1: in the English language as well. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: I see myself as a citizen of humanity, as a
Speaker 1: citizen of the world. So I'm someone who very much
Speaker 1: believes in multiple belongings. That said, like everyone I believe
Speaker 1: who cares about what's happening in the world. There are
Speaker 1: days when I feel so sad. There are days I
Speaker 1: feel an almost existential fatigue. All of that is human,
Speaker 1: and I think we should not be ashamed of our
Speaker 1: emotions or feelings. Feelings are not a sign of weakness,
Speaker 1: just the opposite. They are a source of energy. The
Speaker 1: question is not whether we feel angry or not. The
Speaker 1: question is what do we do with our anger? Can
Speaker 1: you turn it into something much more positive. The only
Speaker 1: thing that worries because it's only one emotion that really
Speaker 1: really troubles me, and that is the lack of all emotions,
Speaker 1: which is numbless. The moment we become numb, you know,
Speaker 1: if I stop caring about your story, if you stop
Speaker 1: caring about my story, or about what's happening elsewhere in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: in Gaza, in Sudan, in Ukraine and everywhere around the world.
Speaker 1: I think that is a very dangerous world, you know.
Speaker 3: I like that you were talking before about liquid and
Speaker 3: solid countries, and I think coming back to the role
Speaker 3: that water plays in this book and that idea about fluidity.
Speaker 3: I know a book that is incredibly important to you
Speaker 3: as a reader and that you return to throughout your
Speaker 3: life is Virginia Wolfs Orlando. And I know that that's
Speaker 3: a book that you think of as a liquid book.
Speaker 2: That is so true because.
Speaker 1: Because it is, it's a water like book, and it's
Speaker 1: constantly evolving, shifting until reading Orlando, and I've read it
Speaker 1: multiple times throughout more life, but the first time I
Speaker 1: read it really struck me. Until then, I did not
Speaker 1: know you could write a novel without any constraints, you
Speaker 1: could fly that high so bravely, with such a sense
Speaker 1: of freedom. And I think it's a book that I
Speaker 1: associate with a sense of freedom. Can you travel through time?
Speaker 1: Can a character live more than just a mortal life?
Speaker 1: Can a story go beyond boundaries of geography, time, gender, culture?
Speaker 1: She dared to do all of that and more so.
Speaker 1: It is an important book for me. But in general,
Speaker 1: I think novels have shown me so much. I love
Speaker 1: the broad canvas of a novel and the way it
Speaker 1: connects the seemingly small with the seemingly big, the wa
Speaker 1: it connects us versus them to such an extent that
Speaker 1: we realize there is no such a thing. There's no
Speaker 1: such thing as the other. So it does dismantle dualities,
Speaker 1: and especially in these times when everything is to dualistic,
Speaker 1: we need to go back to.
Speaker 3: Fiction with a book like There Are Rivers in the Sky,
Speaker 3: which is so kind of rich and layered and texted.
Speaker 3: How do you get the relationship right between if I
Speaker 3: can use your metaphor the solid and the liquid, the
Speaker 3: solidity of research and your sense of responsibility to real stories,
Speaker 3: real historical moments, real bits of knowledge that you want
Speaker 3: to impart on the one hand, and on the other hand,
Speaker 3: that sense that Virginia Wolf sense of possibility, of openness,
Speaker 3: of things moving fluidly from one state to another. How
Speaker 3: do you get that tension right.
Speaker 1: It's a massive challenge, especially as you go back in
Speaker 1: time time and you tap into the forgotten stories and
Speaker 1: the silent stories of minorities such as the YZD minority
Speaker 1: in the Middle East. This is one of the most
Speaker 1: vulnerable and persecuted minorities across the world, of course, in
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, the entire world, So the Zd genocide in
Speaker 1: the hands of ISIS extremists. But we should also know
Speaker 1: that it wasn't the first time that the Azids had
Speaker 1: been persecuted. The Azd lore talks about seventy two massacres
Speaker 1: at least, So how do you approach such a beautiful
Speaker 1: culture but also with respect, with dignity, but without forgetting
Speaker 1: that you're a novelist and you need to fly and
Speaker 1: you need to let your imagination free. I'm always aware
Speaker 1: of those of those challenges. The second challenge, especially in
Speaker 1: this case, was that the Yzidi culture is mostly transferred
Speaker 1: from generation to generation, not through written culture, but through
Speaker 1: oral storytelling, so songs, ballads, folk tales. This is very important,
Speaker 1: a very important part. So I had to do a
Speaker 1: lot of listening, lots of interviews, especially with the z
Speaker 1: the elders. At the same time, there's a story of
Speaker 1: water in my book, so there's a scientific research.
Speaker 2: It was insane, to be honest.
Speaker 1: The amount of books that I had to read and
Speaker 1: the range of books that I had to read for
Speaker 1: this novel, which also includes of course a very deep
Speaker 1: research about the epic of Gilgamesh, the ancient Akkadian rites
Speaker 1: and rituals.
Speaker 2: But I love learning.
Speaker 1: I've stayed in academia for a long time, and from
Speaker 1: political science to cultural history, but also to cookbooks. I
Speaker 1: love reading across the board. But there comes a moment
Speaker 1: when I know I have to let my intuition guide me.
Speaker 3: Are you someone who goes back to books, stories and
Speaker 3: rediscovers them as you yourself have grown, as you yourself
Speaker 3: have changed as a reader.
Speaker 1: I come from a country that has a very very
Speaker 1: rich history and a very complex history, but that does
Speaker 1: not necessarily translate into a strong memory. I think in
Speaker 1: so many ways we are My motherland is a society
Speaker 1: of collective amnesia. So when we talk about the past,
Speaker 1: there are lots of silences and gaps, and I think
Speaker 1: literature is drawn to those silences. Personally, as a writer,
Speaker 1: I don't see myself only as a storyteller, but maybe
Speaker 1: as a silence teller as well. You know, I'm drawn
Speaker 1: to those silences. So the meaning of the past changes
Speaker 1: depending on who is telling the story and who is
Speaker 1: not allowed to tell the story. The moment you start
Speaker 1: asking questions about where were the women. Where were the
Speaker 1: minorities or men who are not in positions of power,
Speaker 1: men from maybe poorer background, more disadvantage backgrounds. Suddenly there's
Speaker 1: a huge silence in history books. So I think literature
Speaker 1: can take a closer look at those silences.
Speaker 3: As a parent with your kids, how do you decide
Speaker 3: what stories to share with them and when at what
Speaker 3: point the stories that matter to you get threaded into
Speaker 3: their lives and their understanding of the world.
Speaker 1: I've always been interested in how, especially in immigrant families
Speaker 1: or any family that has experienced some kind of displacement
Speaker 1: complex history, there are generational differences. Now I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about my family in this instant, but I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: many immigrant families that have experienced some kind of trauma
Speaker 1: on for instance, either side of the Atlantic. What stayed
Speaker 1: with me is when you talk to the elderly, the
Speaker 1: people have experienced the biggest challenges. They don't talk about
Speaker 1: the past much, which doesn't mean they have forgotten the past,
Speaker 1: of course they haven't, but they don't know how to
Speaker 1: talk about these things, so it stays in their chest
Speaker 1: and they don't know how to express those emotions. The
Speaker 1: second generation immigrants, they're usually not interested in that in
Speaker 1: the past as much, understandably because they have to be
Speaker 1: forward looking, future oriented. It's almost like tabola rasa. You
Speaker 1: need to build a new life, which leaves the youngest
Speaker 1: in these families. The third or fourth generations today are
Speaker 1: the ones who are asking the biggest, sharpest, deepest questions
Speaker 1: about their ancestors, stories and heritage, and they want to
Speaker 1: know the family silences, not only the family stories. I've
Speaker 1: always been interested in that as a novelist. Now come
Speaker 1: to my experience personally, I try to talk more. I'm
Speaker 1: aware that family silences can shape people, but at the
Speaker 1: same time, I cannot claim that I'm doing such a
Speaker 1: great job because it's one thing to talk about these
Speaker 1: issues intellectually, it's another thing to apply it in your life.
Speaker 1: But I think always communication is a better way, even
Speaker 1: when you talk about difficult subjects such as exile, you know,
Speaker 1: not being able to go back and so on. And
Speaker 1: many young people are actually more welcoming of the idea
Speaker 1: of having multiple belongings if we just let them be.
Speaker 1: But because of politics, because of the world we're living in,
Speaker 1: because we're constantly pushing them into boxes of us versus them,
Speaker 1: we're not allowing them to celebrate their own multiplicity. You know,
Speaker 1: we have to always remember what World Woodman so beautifully said,
Speaker 1: We do contain multitudes as human beings. So whether it's
Speaker 1: the immigrant experience or any other experience, we all have
Speaker 1: actually multiplicity inside.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. This was such a joy. It's
Speaker 2: such a pleasure.
Speaker 3: Elif Shaffack's latest novel, There Are Rivers in the Sky,
Speaker 3: is available at all good bookstores. Now, before we go,
Speaker 3: I wanted to tell you what I've been reading this week,
Speaker 3: and I was a big fan of Veronica Gorri's memoir
Speaker 3: Black and Blue, that came out a few years ago
Speaker 3: as a story about her time working as a police
Speaker 3: officer and her fight for justice after her time in
Speaker 3: the police force as an aboriginal woman. She's brought out
Speaker 3: a new book called When Cops Are Criminals, which is
Speaker 3: a powerful indictment of the criminal behavior of police officers
Speaker 3: and a call for systemic reform. It's a really terrific
Speaker 3: collection of essays and I recommend it highly. You can
Speaker 3: find it and all the other books we've mentioned today
Speaker 3: at your Face I read Independent bookstore. That's it for
Speaker 3: this week, should as always write, review, subscribe, follow that
Speaker 3: list seems to be getting bigger, But do all those
Speaker 3: things next week. I'm read this. I speak with writer, professor,
Speaker 3: social commentator Roxanne Gay ahead of her, straight into her,
Speaker 3: and she shares the very specific horror that comes from
Speaker 3: reading your old book.
Speaker 5: Every time you read a book back, you start to
Speaker 5: see tics like in my novel and Untamed State Mirey.
Speaker 4: Who's the protagonist.
Speaker 5: She exhales cigarette smokes so much, and I'm clearly using
Speaker 5: it as this device to show that she's sad or
Speaker 5: she's pensive.
Speaker 4: And when I read through the novel, I was like,
Speaker 4: my god, she exhales too much.
Speaker 5: Fortunately, I don't take myself so seriously that I can't
Speaker 5: laugh at like my tips and quirks, and you know,
Speaker 5: I just always think.
Speaker 4: Oh man, that's imprint forever. But then I I'll tell myself,
Speaker 4: I'm going to do better next.
Speaker 3: Time read this. This is produced and edited by Clara Ames,
Speaker 3: with mixing and original compositions by Zalton Fetcher. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 4: Say you next work