Are authors better equipped to handle lockdowns? Why is the pandemic dividing rather than uniting the world? And how do you handle being prosecuted for something a fictional character in your novel says?

Award-winning Turkish-British novelist Elif Shafak joins Julie Etchingham on Ask A Woman to answer those questions and more.

Elif has earned a global and devoted readership for titles that range from The Forty Rules Of Love, How To Stay Sane In An Age Of Division and The Bastard of Istanbul, the latter of which led to her being put on infamous trial - and emphatically acquitted - in 2006 for “insulting Turkishness” by addressing the Armenian genocide.

Aside from writing, she is also a political scientist and passionate women’s rights and freedom of speech activist.

In this episode of the podcast, Elif discusses:

01:30 - Why a publisher’s claim about lockdown’s impact on writers was wrong

3:35 - How the last 18 months have made her rethink her priorities in life

6:00 - The future of our society and why social media has left so many people voiceless

07:40 - Why the pandemic has brought out the worst of us after bringing out the best of us

11:10 - The danger of current culture wars

13:20 - How to unite with those we disagree with and why everyone is complex

16:35 - Why older people have a responsibility to listen to younger people and why the answer “I don’t know” is so rarely heard in 2021

20:02 - How academics, students and the rest of society should react to the furore over controversial statues

25:28 - How she looks back on being prosecuted in Turkey for the views of her fictional characters

27:14 - Why trust has to be restored in democracy, for the protection of women

30:25 - The truly imaginative guest who’ll join a legendary English writer and influential German-American political scientist at her dream dinner table

32:22 - And finally, why her belief in feminism can transform and unite both men and women