Elif Shafak on the Power of Storytelling

A Between the Lines conversation about literature, power, memory and the voices we choose to hear, with award-winning author Elif Shafak Elif Shafak on the Power of Storytelling Tuesday, 17 November 2026 6:30-7:30pm RSA House and online via YouTube We are living through a period of political upheaval, war, polarisation and competing versions of truth. So what can stories actually do? Who gets to tell them, whose voices are missing, and can literature help us understand people we might otherwise see only as “the other”? For this Between the Lines conversation, award-winning British-Turkish novelist Elif Shafak joins us to discuss her new novel, In One Brief Moment All Eternity, and the power of stories to challenge what we think we know. Reimagining the life of Gustave Flaubert, the celebrated nineteenth-century author of Madame Bovary, through the women - real and fictional - who shaped him, Shafak asks who gets to tell history, whose voices are remembered, and whose are left behind. Spanning nineteenth-century France, Istanbul, Egypt and Beirut, the novel is an ambitious literary portrait and a meditation on creativity, power and storytelling in times of political upheaval. Elif Shafak will join us live at the Royal Society of Arts with best-selling author and Professor Janina Ramirez for a timely conversation about what stories can do when reality feels fractured, and whether literature can help us understand the world – and one another – differently. The conversation will explore the ideas behind In One Brief Moment All Eternity, as well as Shafak’s wider belief in literature’s ability to cross borders, challenge assumptions and make space for voices pushed to the margins. Elif Shafak will be signing copies of In One Brief Moment All Eternity after the event. Copies will be available to purchase on the evening. Elif Shafak: An award-winning British Turkish novelist, whose work has been translated into fifty-seven languages. The author of twenty books, fourteen of which are novels, she was awarded the Halldór Laxness Prize for her contribution to the art of storytelling. Shafak's previous novel, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, was the UK’s bestselling literary hardback novel of 2025, selling over 500,000 copies. Widely read in many countries around the world, her writing has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, and Prix Femina Etranger, amongst others, and she was nominated for ‘Author of the Year’ at the British Book Awards. Elif Shafak was appointed President of the Royal Society of Literature in 2025. She was awarded the British Academy President’s medal for bravely tackling sensitive subjects and for her body of work which demonstrates an incredible intercultural range. Between the Lines: Before ideas change the world, they change minds. The stories we tell - and the ways we make sense of them - shape what we believe is possible, whose voices are heard, and how we understand one another. Between the Lines is a series of conversations with writers, artists and thinkers exploring the power of ideas and narrative to reveal hidden truths, challenge how we see the world and imagine different futures. Together, they ask: what might we see, imagine and create if we told different stories? Image credit: Supplied