Elif Shafak

Shafak was raised largely by her diplomat grandmother in Ankara after her parents separated, and has written in both Turkish and English, sometimes drafting first in English and later translating her own work back into Turkish: an unusual practice she says lets her approach charged subjects with more distance.

The Bastard of Istanbul (2006) entwines an Armenian-American family in San Francisco with their Turkish counterparts in Istanbul around the buried memory of the 1915 Armenian genocide, a subject Turkish law long treated as taboo to discuss. Shafak was prosecuted under Turkey's Article 301, which criminalized 'insulting Turkishness,' over statements by her novel's characters; she was acquitted, but the case, following similar prosecutions of other Turkish writers, pushed her toward permanent life in Britain.

She has continued writing prolifically in exile, addressing Kurdish rights, gender, and Ottoman history, and remains one of Turkey's most internationally translated novelists.