NEW YORK — A book published by the Armenian International Women’s Association (AIWA) was highly recommended by Turkish novelist Elif Shafak in an interview appearing in the December 26, 2019, issue of the New York Times Book Review.
Asked to name her “favorite book no one else has heard of,” Shafak cited In the Ruins by Zabel Yessayan, an account of the 1909 massacres of Armenians in Adana.
“The Armenian feminist, novelist and intellectual Zabel Yessayan was a writer with a brilliant mind and a woman far ahead of her time,” Shafak said in the interview.
“In the Ruins is a heart-rending cry, an important chronicle,” she added. “A very important read.”
An award-winning British-Turkish author, Shafak writes in both Turkish and English. Her most recent novel, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, was a finalist for the 2019 Booker Prize. Her earlier works include the bestselling novels The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love, and Three Daughters of Eve.
“Read women writers, women journalists, women poets, women academics,” Shafak advised in the New York Times interview. “And when I say women, I mean women of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds.”
