Join us for a special afternoon with one of today’s most influential and much-loved literary voices.

Internationally-acclaimed novelist Elif Shafak returns to celebrate her extraordinary new novel, In One Brief Moment All Eternity. Spanning decades and continents, from revolutionary 19th-century France to Istanbul, Egypt and Beirut, this luminous and deeply moving story explores creativity and resistance in times of political upheaval and war. Reimagining the life of Gustave Flaubert through the real and fictional women who shaped him, Elif Shafak builds a fascinating bridge between Western prose and Eastern poetry and offers a powerful meditation on literature’s enduring role in a fractured world.

Elif Shafak is a multi-award-winning British-Turkish novelist and storyteller. She has published 21 books, translated into almost 60 languages, including 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World and The Island of Missing Trees. A President of the Royal Society of Literature, she has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and is a strong advocate for women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights and freedom of expression.

A Manchester Literature Festival event in partnership with the Centre of New Writing and Creative Manchester.