Elif Shafak for In One Brief Moment All Eternity

From the Booker and Women's Prize-shortlisted author of There are Rivers in the Sky and The Island of Missing Trees

During a time of great turmoil, Gustave Flaubert created literature's most scandalous heroine: Madame Bovary. He then poisoned her with arsenic. But what if, 175 years later, Emma could seize the quill from his hands and tell a different story?

In One Brief Moment All Eternity is a luminous reinvention of an iconic male writer, told through the eyes of the women, real and fictional, who shaped him: a devoted nursemaid, an Egyptian dancer, and a passionate, jealous lover who refuses to be forgotten. Through their voices, Elif Shafak creates both an intimate portrait of a great artist and an epic meditation on storytelling itself: who gets remembered, who gets erased, and how can literature endure through political upheaval, war, and injustice?

Shafak takes readers on an extraordinary journey through time and space, from Flaubert's unusual childhood in a house that was part home, part hospital, part morgue, to nineteenth-century Paris during the Revolution, and onwards to Istanbul, Cairo, Palestine, and Beirut. In this exhilarating tale, the questions at the heart of her work take on a thrilling new urgency: who gets to speak and what would the silenced have said?

In One Brief Moment All Eternity is a love letter to literature, untold stories, neglected communities, and the enduring spirit of humanity. When the world feels broken, how do we find the hope to carry on?

'Make place for Elif Shafak on your bookshelf. Make place for her in your heart too.' Arundhati Roy

'A unique and powerful voice in world literature' Ian McEwan

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist whose books have been translated into 58 languages. The Island of Missing Trees was a finalist for the Costa Award, British Book Awards, RSL Ondaatje Prize and Women’s Prize for Fiction and was a Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize. The Forty Rules of Love was chosen by BBC among the 100 Novels that Shaped Our World. The Architect’s Apprentice was chosen for The Queen’s Reading Room. In One Brief Moment All Eternity will be published on the 15th of October.