What is the deal with the unbreakable bond between culture and literature? We would like to present you three authors who have taken up the challenging task to present the culture of their nation in all of its aspects without sparing the readers anything.
What is literature all about? Learning about faraway lands whose full diverse world cannot be captured even by your brave imagination? Exploring opinions totally in contrast with your own perception of the world? Or immersing yourself in a new culture to be taught its most admirable sides as well as its darkest ones?
The three authors in this article are best known for their novels, which manage to capture the essence of their national culture. Without being afraid to show its most intimate parts, they introduce their culture to the world in its full appearance. Many of them include distressing topics such as war, social crisis, extreme cruelty and a fight for basic human rights but among them the reader can easily identify the driving forces of love, family and solidarity which, at the end of the day, keep the world together.
Elif Shafak
Elif Shafak is a Turkish writer born in 1971 in Strasbourg, France. Her books, written in both Turkish and English, have been translated into 55 languages. Born Elif Bilgin, at the beginning of her writing career she would take her mother’s name – Şafak (from Turkish şafak – . Her decision can be interpreted as a distinction from the traditional patriarchal family model in which she did not grow up due to the early divorce of her parents, an imprint on her works. H feminism, multiculturalism and the fusion between the East and the West. Despite having lived in many places – Spain, Jordan, USA and UK – Istanbul has the biggest place in her heart, which she turns into a central topos in her work giving it a full-fledged image in her works. According to Shafak, ”East and West are not water and oil. They do mix. And in a city like Istanbul, they mix intensely, incessantly, surprisingly.”
Some of her most famous novels are The Forty Rules of Love, The Bastard of Istanbul, The Architect’s Apprentice, Three Daughters of Eve, The Island of Missing Trees, and The Flea Palace. They manage to capture, to different extents, the topics of feminism and human rights, but all of them include the colorful Turkish culture. Thanks to the various historical periods in which she sets her novels, the reader can observe the deep roots of the culture as much in the XV c. Ottoman Empire as in modern Türkiye or during the peak of the Cypriot conflict. Shafak also puts an emphasis on how influential culture is in all aspects of people’s lives. It guides people’s everyday life and traditions, but it also forms their worldview, morals and whole self.
Each of her novels is a journey into the depths of human consciousness and sensibility, through which the reader tries to understand what makes a person the way he is. It may be the strong connection to his ancestors and roots that helps him find himself, but that also binds him to the centuries-old behavior model which needs to be adapted accordingly with the time he lives in. The same cultural tie however, keeps alive the sound family institution serving as a support system. This factor is crucial to the individual in times full of uncertainty and radical political changes. It provides at least one stable element in his life bringing color, comfort and warmth.
Narine Abgaryan
Narine Abgaryan is an Armenian writer, born in 1971 in Berd, Armenia. She gained popularity at the age of 40 when, in 2011, she received an award for her first novel, Manyunya. She studied to become a teacher of Russian language and literature in Moscow, where she met the love that made her decide to stay in Russia. Writing in Russian, she published her first stories on her blog, but it wasn’t long before her great writing style became the subject of interest from many publishers.
Abgaryan is particularly fond of family history, and that is why she touches on the subject of returning to her roots, Armenian culture and the particularly difficult fate of her homeland in most of her books. Novels like Simon, Three Apples Fell from the Sky, and To Live On are centered around the very essence of Armenian culture which survives beyond wars, famine, poverty and personal tragedies. As a nation which had to live for quite some time under foreign rules, the culture was the main lifebelt to hold on to in order to protect their identity. Without it they would have been easily assimilated, but with the solid basis provided by their ancestry, heritage and customs they secured their national consciousness which allowed them to retain their identity.
Khaled Hosseini
Khaled Hosseini is an Afghan-American writer and physician of Tajik-Pashtun descent born in 1965 in Kabul, Afghanistan. His father was a diplomat in the Foreign Ministry and his mother was a teacher at a girls’ high school. During his childhood, they lived in the wealthy neighborhood of Wazir Akbar Khan in a very educated, cosmopolitan environment where women could live and work equal to men. In 1976 his family moved to Paris essentially avoiding the bloody future of the country. His debut novel The Kite Runner is initially inspired by his nostalgic childhood memories of the peaceful Afghanistan whereas his second book A Thousand Splendid Suns is written after he returns to his home-country and is told many stories about the troubled times mainly through a female perspective.
All three of his books address the issues of gender inequality, the war years, the cruel fates of many and yet he also speaks about self-sacrifice, love and honor. The Afghan culture is interpreted in its unfortunate aspect – as beautiful and rich it is, its opportunity to be shown and developed is lost. Hosseini enlightens the public on it but also presents how easily it can be disregarded and even distorted by political leaders or regimes to gain political power. Thus, it is very challenging to preserve the culture in its pure form while still fighting for modernization and even survival.
Culture is a complex matter which has the odd power to survive through centuries and various outside threats. In runs in the veins of nations, holds families together and serves as a driving force during the toughest times. Literature has the responsible task of portraying it in all its aspects and present it to the general public by additionally educating them how to take care of it.
