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Black Milk
  • Published: 23 October 2013
  • ISBN: 9780241966259
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $24.99

Black Milk

On Motherhood and Writing

Formats & editions
EBook
7 Mar 2013
Paperback
23 Oct 2013
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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 in 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 beautiful and 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: $24.99
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About the author

Elif Shafak

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish novelist, whose work has been translated into fifty-seven languages. The author of twenty books, fourteen of which are novels, she is a bestselling author in many countries around the world. Shafak's previous novel, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, was the UK’s bestselling literary hardback novel of 2025, selling over 500,000 copies. Her work has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, amongst others, and she is currently nominated for ‘Author of the Year’ at the British Book Awards. Elif Shafak was appointed President of the Royal Society of Literature in 2025. Her books have sold several million copies worldwide.
ES

Also by Elif Shafak

There are Rivers in the Sky
The Island of Missing Trees
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World
The Forty Rules of Love
The Architect's Apprentice
The Bastard of Istanbul
In One Brief Moment All Eternity
See all

Praise for Black Milk

Black Milk is a book to dip into, to lend around, a book that you feel deserves to be read by all women attempting to draw together so many differing aspirations. . . It's a book to be readily passed on to. . .

Le Magazine Azur

An intimate, affecting memoir . . . Her passion for literature is contagious, and her struggle with postpartum depression and writer's block reinforces how carefully all of us must tread.

Colleen Mondor