Order of Elif Shafak Books

Elif Shafak is a Turkish author. She is known for her novels exploring identity, belonging, and cultural conflict. Shafak’s writing often tackles controversial issues such as gender violence, political oppression, and historical memory. Born in France and raised in Turkey, Shafak holds a Ph.D. in political science and has taught at universities in Turkey, the U.S., and the U.K., including the University of Oxford. She has faced legal challenges in Turkey for the political themes in her work, most recently a plagiarism accusation in 2024, which she is appealing. A vocal advocate for women’s rights and freedom of expression, she now lives in London, where she continues to write and speak on global human rights issues.

Elif Shafak made her debut as a novelist in 1999 with The Gaze. Below is a list of Elif Shafak’s books in order of when they were originally released:

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

If You Like Elif Shafak Books, You’ll Love…

• Han Kang
• Zoulfa Katouh
• Marjan Kamali

Elif Shafak Synopses: There Are Rivers in the Sky is a standalone novel by Elif Shafak. In the shadow of ancient Nineveh, King Ashurbanipal – both scholar and tyrant – created a legendary library on the banks of the Tigris River. Though the library crumbled with his fall, one story endured: the Epic of Gilgamesh. From its surviving fragments emerges a timeless thread, weaving together the fates of three lives across centuries.

In 1840s London, Arthur is born into poverty by the polluted Thames, the child of a violent father and a fragile mother. Armed with an extraordinary memory, he rises from the slums as a publishing apprentice, where an excavation account – Nineveh and Its Remains – sparks an obsession that will shape his life.

In 2014 Turkey, ten-year-old Narin, a Yazidi girl, is diagnosed with a condition that will render her deaf. Her grandmother, determined to perform a sacred ritual before that silence falls, must race against time and the encroaching threat of ISIS to preserve their heritage along the vanishing Tigris.

And in 2018 London, Zaleekah, a hydrologist adrift in the wake of divorce and personal loss, finds temporary refuge on a houseboat moored to the Thames. With her life hanging in the balance, a forgotten book tied to her ancestral homeland offers an unexpected spark of hope.

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak is a standalone novel. On the divided island of Cyprus, two teenagers – Kostas, a Greek Cypriot, and Defne, a Turkish Cypriot – fall in love beneath the branches of a fig tree growing inside a hidden taverna. Surrounded by garlands of garlic, chilies, and creeping honeysuckle, their secret meetings blossom into something deep and enduring, even as the island begins to fracture around them. When war erupts and the capital crumbles into ruin, the fig tree bears silent witness to their sudden disappearance.

Years later, Kostas returns – not just as a botanist in search of native flora, but as a man still haunted by the past. Meanwhile, in a London backyard, a Ficus carica grows – a living relic of a homeland Ada Kazantzakis has never seen. Raised amid silence and shadows, Ada begins to unravel the secrets her family has long kept buried. As she navigates her heritage, grief, and identity, the fig tree once again becomes a symbol of memory, resilience, and the enduring power of love across generations.