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  • Published: 23 October 2013
  • ISBN: 9780241966259
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $29.99

Black Milk

On Motherhood and Writing




An affecting and beautifully written memoir on motherhood and writing by Turkey's bestselling female author

Postnatal depression affects millions of new mothers every year, and - like most of its victims- Elif Shafak never expected to be one of them

But after the birth of her first child in 2006, the internationally bestselling Turkish author remembers how, "for the first time my adult life... words wouldn't speak to me".

As her despair finally eased, Shafak sought to resuscitate her writing life by chronicling her own experiences

In her intimate memoir, she reveals how she struggled to overcome her depression and how literature provided the salvation she so desperately needed

  • Published: 23 October 2013
  • ISBN: 9780241966259
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $29.99

About the author

Elif Shafak

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish novelist whose work has been translated into fifty-five languages. The author of nineteen books, twelve of which are novels, she is a bestselling author in many countries around the world. Shafak's latest novel, The Island of Missing Trees, was a top ten Sunday Times bestseller, a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick and was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the Women's Prize. Her previous novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the RSL Ondaatje Prize; longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award; and chosen as Blackwell's Book of the Year. She is a Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature. Shafak was awarded the Halldór Laxness International Literature Prize for her contribution to 'the renewal of the art of storytelling.'

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