TURKISH NOVELIST UP FOR BRITISH PRIZE

Reuters
New York Times
March 18 2008

LONDON (Reuters) – A writer whose novel put her on trial for "insulting
Turkishness" made the longlist for a prestigious British fiction
prize on Tuesday.

Elif Shafak, author of the bestseller "The Bastard of Istanbul" was one
of 20 writers longlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.

Ms. Shafak was prosecuted in Turkey over comments made by characters
in her book about the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks.

She was acquitted by an Istanbul court in 2006.

The book interweaves stories of a Turkish and an Armenian family in
the United States and Istanbul.

The Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and other Turkish intellectuals
have been prosecuted for the same offense.

In January of 2007, Ms. Shafak cut short a book tour promoting the
novel in the United States because of fears for her safety after
the murder of Hrant Dink, a newspaper editor who was prosecuted
for challenging the official Turkish version of the 1915 Armenian
genocide, her publisher said. She was attacked on nationalist Web
sites the publisher, Paul Slovak, of Viking, said at the time. Ms.

Shafak was born in France and is of Turkish descent.

The Orange Prize is open to any woman writing in English.

The novel is one of several in this year’s longlist to deal with
immigration.

The winner will be announced at a ceremony on June 4.