Marketing stories: Writing with faith and reading in search of spirituality in Elif Shafak’s fiction

Abstract

This article focuses on the reception of Elif Shafak’s fiction as it circulates within the global literary marketplace, examining the responses of secular and religious readerships in English and Turkish. Taking Shafak’s 2010 novel, The Forty Rules of Love, and her 2016 work, Three Daughters of Eve, as case studies, and referring to media and reader reviews of these books, and public commentary by the author, it evaluates the readerly relationships with spirituality and faith that Shafak constructs as they are emulated by both the readers in her novels and the readers of her novels. In doing so, it asks what reading methodologies Shafak forges in a marketplace that situates books as both stories and products. In the urgent defence of a cosmopolitan ideal, and amidst transcontinental markets and metropoles, this article argues that Shafak puts faith in the potential for conviviality to be fostered by the process of reading.