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

Browse other books written by Elif Shafak here.

About the author:

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish novelist, whose work has been translated into fifty-eight languages. The author of twenty books, thirteen of which are novels, she is a bestselling author in many countries around the world. Shafak's novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. The Island of Missing Trees was a Sunday Times bestseller, and was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the Women's Prize for Fiction. There are Rivers in the Sky, which won an Edward Stanford Award for Fiction, is her latest novel.

Shafak holds a PhD in political science, and is a Fellow and a Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature. She has been awarded the medal of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and, in 2024, was awarded the British Academy President's Medal for 'her excellent body of work which demonstrates an incredible intercultural range'.