In One Brief Moment All Eternity

by Elif Shafak

In One Brief Moment All Eternity is an astonishing new novel by the bestselling, prize-winning novelist Elif Shafak. Spanning decades and continents, from revolutionary 19th century France to Istanbul, Egypt and Beirut, it is a profound meditation on creativity in times of political crisis and war, asking what literature can hope to offer when the world feels broken. Building a fascinating bridge between Western prose and Eastern poetry, this story offers a luminous portrait of the life of an iconic writer, Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary, told through the lives of the women – both real and fictional – who shaped him.

'Make place for Elif Shafak on your bookshelf. Make place for her in your heart too. You won't regret it' ARUNDHATI ROY

'A unique and powerful voice in world literature' IAN MCEWAN

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Books About Books, Historical, France, Literary Fiction, Adult

Kindle Edition

First published October 15, 2026

About the author

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist and the most widely read female author in Turkey. She writes in both Turkish and English, and has published seventeen books, eleven of which are novels. Her work has been translated into fifty languages. Shafak holds a PhD in political science and she has taught at various universities in Turkey, the US and the UK, including St Anne's College, Oxford University, where she is an honorary fellow. She is a member of Weforum Global Agenda Council on Creative Economy and a founding member of ECFR (European Council on Foreign Relations). An advocate for women's rights, LGBT rights and freedom of speech, Shafak is an inspiring public speaker and twice a TED Global speaker, each time receiving a standing ovation. Shafak contributes to major publications around the world and she has been awarded the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. In 2017 she was chosen by Politico as one of the twelve people who would make the world better. She has judged numerous literary prizes and is chairing the Wellcome Prize 2019. www.elifshafak.com

Reviews

[Caz · Rating 4 out of 5]

We meet Gustave as a boy growing up in a family where there are expectations about the future he should have. But Gustave has his own ideas. He’s a sensitive, lonely, bookish boy with a love of stories and a wonderful imagination. He sees the world differently from those around him and wants to write rather than simply follow the path expected of him. I couldn’t help feeling for him. It’s hard enough trying to find your place in the world without feeling that the people closest to you have a completely different future in mind for you.

Inspired by the life of Gustave Flaubert, the nineteenth-century French writer, Elif Shafak takes us through different stages of his life, bringing together history, imagination and the people who helped shape his world. I enjoyed how she approaches his story in a way that feels different from a straightforward account of his life.

I really enjoyed the characters in this one. Elif Shafak has a lovely way of bringing them to life, and I found myself stopping now and then to think about what I’d just read. I do like a book that makes me pause for a moment rather than simply turning the pages without giving anything much thought.

I particularly liked hearing the different women’s voices throughout the story. They each bring their own perspective, and I liked seeing how their experiences helped shape the story of Gustave’s life. It also got me thinking about how differently we can see someone depending on our own experiences. We all have our own stories to tell, don’t we?

Then there’s Emma Bovary, the fictional heroine Gustave Flaubert created in Madame Bovary. I found it fascinating how Elif Shafak brings the real and fictional worlds together. I enjoyed seeing how the characters and stories connect, and it added something extra to the reading experience for me.

For me, this is about more than Gustave’s life. It’s about the people who touch our lives, the stories we tell and the ones that might otherwise go unheard. We can think we know someone, but there’s often so much more to them than we realise.

This isn’t one I’d want to rush through. I’m glad I took my time with this one. It’s a book that leaves you with things to think about, and I enjoyed letting it all sink in.

Thank you to NetGalley, Penguin General UK and Elif Shafak for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Publication date: 15 October 2026

[Emily (Books with Emily Fox on Youtube)]

OMG, give it to me now!

[Stephen the Bookworm · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best reads of 2026!

" When he thinks of his solitude, his strangeness, he is convinced that life is only tolerable if you have a passion, which does not mean you have to be successful, only sincere, otherwise you would die."

A new Elif Shafak novel is always something to look forward to and this book is fictional writing of the highest quality. Gripping, meticulously plotted and weaving history with a magical surrealism. I was hooked from page one and devoured the novel over a few days.

One hundred and seventy years ago saw the book publication of Gustave Flaubert's 'scandalous' story of Emma Bovary - a woman who follows a path of affairs and extravagance to escape the monotony of a dull marriage - ultimately leading to suicide by arsenic. The book resulted in a famous court case.

This was a powerful story written by a man exploring the life of a woman but what would happen if the tables were turned and the story of the author's life was written from the perspective of and told by the women in his life; not just one woman. but thirty different characters he encounters during his life- some family and close friends or others he meets through circumstance and his insatiable curiosity to understand the human condition.

Elif Shafak takes us on a journey through the life of Gustave Flaubert- from his turbulent childhood living in a hospital and close to a morgue where as a boy he connected to the world around by observing life through a very different lens of understanding; onto teenage years in a boarding school where his sense of isolation or disconnection became an inner strength; his adult life of exploring Paris and travels to Egypt, Turkey and Beirut experiencing and witnessing different lives and his years as an author developing and building his craft drawing upon the events and encounters he had made especially in relation to women. and people who are hidden beneath the veneer of bourgeois life.

" He despises 'the champions of law and order' with their claims of moral superiority. As far as he is concerned, the outsider is more genuine and much more lovable than. the so-called 'respectable citizens'.

The stories of his life are full of beautiful detailed observations capturing the inner thoughts of all around Flaubert and the author's own personal challenges and reflections. Elif Shafak research weaves wonderful descriptions of the world in which Flaubert exists and observes. Chapters are often titled using a colour palette of hues, tints and shades that highlight the way in which Flaubert observed the world - the small details that he relished and from within his own personal health.

This isn't just a fictional biography but something much more intense and important. This is a recognition and plea to all of us to cherish the world of literature; the art of the writer; the need for books ; the power of the written word; the power of being different and not just accepting the world us. In a world where AI is hijacking the works of others and diminishing the capacity to question, be imaginative or just dive into book, this novel sounds the alarm of what we could lose if we don't let individualism flourish in fictional writing.

Flaubert at one point says to his niece, " Do not read, a children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, my dear, read in order to live." In one sentence so much is encapsulated,

Elif Sahfak is the consummate novelist and this is a wonderful novel. The stylistic device of moving between perspectives ( with small vignettes of a character's life brought to mind the earlier works of Garcia Marquez and Allende. Hypnotic, beguiling and powerful.

One of my favourite books of 2026 without a doubt - storytelling that goes beyond superlatives.

Highly recommend .

Thank you to Viking Books/penguin random House and net galley for the advance copy for an honest and unbiased review.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

First of all, I have never read Madame Bovary and knew nothing about Gustave Flaubert, whom this book is based on. Secondly, I rarely give books five stars, yet this is already one of my favorites of 2026 - even though it won't be published until January 2027.

I have a serious book hangover after finishing this masterpiece by the multi-faceted Elif Shafak. Weaving Flaubert’s life story with rich historical elements, Shafak has written what is essentially a love letter to literature and its creators. The story features perspectives ranging from a beloved camel to Emma (the protagonist of Madame Bovary) and even syphilis itself.

There are truly few words that can fully describe this book, except: READ THIS when it comes out in 2027.

Thank you to Knopf for the advance reading copy!

FULL RTC

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

If only Gustave Flaubert himself were to become a fictional character inside a novel; his mind, body and soul, his love affairs and heartbreaks all subject to interpretation – and, inevitably, misinterpretation. Dropped from on high like a hatchling slipped from the talons of a hawk, would he survive and thrive down here amidst us humble folk of the imagined realm? Would he make a more virtuous dramatis persona than I? Then I think to myself, what if this novel were narrated by women? Not just me, but perhaps many more of us, hailing from every class, creed and circumstance. Yes, what if multiple women were to tell the story of one man’s life? Flaubert always says, ‘It is splendid to be a writer, to put people into the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts.’ How about we pop him like one big, meaty chestnut? How about we cast the die anew, swing the pendulum back, reverse our fortunes? I mean, here is an eminent author who enjoys – no, clearly relishes – his self-professed role as the great authority on the ‘fairer sex’. I wonder what would happen if women were to pluck the quill from his hand this once and dream up a whole new story for Gustave – the boy, the youth and the man.

 
This is the seventh of the Turkish-British novelist, essayist, speaker and activist Elif Shafak’s novels I have read of which here most recent (and those in whose lineage this novel I believe closely followed) were: the Booker Prize (and Costa Award and Ondaatje Prize) shortlisted “10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in This Strange World” a post-death Proustian take on the outcasts of Istanbul society; the Women’s Prize (and Edward Standord Travel Writing Award and British Book Award) shortlisted “The Island of Missing Trees” a multigenerational treatment of the Cyprus conflict that needed a “Twigger Warning” for its Olive Tree narrator; the Orwell Prize Finalist (and Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize winning) “There Are Rivers in The Sky” which uses as its framing device a single drop of water to draw together a 19th Century Assyriologist with a modern day hydrologists and the fate of the Yazidis.
 
Here, Shafak uses much of her signature techniques: historical fiction examining times of upheaval; a feminist slant and a wider emphasis on those on the fringes of (or otherwise who do not fit in with) conventional society; multi-voiced novels; a sweeping range of topics; an ability to explore some heavyweight political themes in what can seem a lightweight series of literary devices (heavy-handed foreshadowing, rather portentous narration and dialogue); the use of narrators both inanimate and already deceased – to write an unconventional and it has to be said enjoyable and admirably constructed deliberately fictionalised retelling of the life of the legendary novelist Gustave Flaubert, author of one of the greatest novels of all time – Madame Bovary.
 
The conceit of the novel beings in 1855 as Flaubert, besotted with the heroine who has absorbed his every waking and sleeping moment for the five years of the novel’s genesis and construction, decides that he finally has to kill the woman he loves.  An immediately following chapter is in the voice of Emma – who decides in turn that she should turn the tables and write about Flaubert – to give his life the same examination as her own will be subject to – and that the novel should be narrated by multiple women from all aspects of his life “to dream up a whole new story for Gustave – the boy the youth and the man”.
 
From there the novel takes place over five parts (Childhood, Adolescence, Youth, Middle Age and Old Age). 
 
Each features – in chronological progression – around a dozen vignettes of Flaubert’s imagined life but each based around a coloured object (more than 50 such vignettes with the different colours of each listed in the table contents as Colours of Youth etc).  The colours themselves both link to the synaesthesia Gustave is portrayed as having and, at least for me, to a magical bird and that he sees each time he is starting an epileptic fit (and note that “The Conference of the Birds” is also an important device in the novel – and directly inspires its title). 
 
We learn of his upbringing, his struggles with the expectations of his parents, his love for stories and writing, his despair for Bourgeoise convention, his involvement in the upheavals of France and Paris (and rejection of political extremism of both sides) and more – in what I have to say was for me a convincing portrait of a writer and a person (Shafak is clear and eloquent in the afterword that she has taken deliberate liberties with the historical record and more tried to recreate a coherent imagined story – and in this I think she succeeds admirably even though I am sure some of her treatment – for example of the Paris Communards – would be considered superficial by historians).
 
And mixed in with these – and very much the heart of the story and crucial to the novel’s conception and execution  are 30 numbered sections told in the voices of women (or female characters) who interact with Gustave.
 
These range from family members such as sister and mother, to and lovers (or crushes), to staff (including his beloved nurse and lifelong staff member), to incidental characters such as a baker (although one of Shafak’s clear aims here is to ensure that seemingly incidental characters all link in ways unknown to them as well as Flaubert), to his famous English translator (the daughter of Karl Marx), to a camel, to a corpse, to the City of Istanbul to syphilis ………all of them telling not so much the story of Flaubert but their own story.
 
All of this drawn together as Emma comes to terms with the death of her own creation and with a neat ending which expands on the famous (if possibly apocryphal) “Madame Bovary, C’est Moi” quote (although possibly one of the novel’s rare missteps as it did seem to slightly undermine the female telling idea).
 
The novel is long – just under 600 pages – but the structure for me kept it interesting, although I suspect there is a stronger 400 page novel within it – perhaps matching the number of colours to the 30 female-voice sections (30 incidentially linking back to the ending and mysterious Simurgh in “he Conference of the Birds”) . 
 
But overall for me this is Shafak’s bets novel to date and represents imaginative writing at its best – drawing on the power of the novel form to explore what makes novel writing and the empathy for the other it engenders so important.  The author seems largely to be a prize-winning bridesmaid – but I would love to see this gain her the 2027 Women’s Prize (albeit she is up against at least four former prize winners).
 
My thanks to Viking Books for a paper ARC and an ARC via NetGalley
 

They are all here. All these female voices that have moulded and modelled his existence, each so singular, so distinct. He has met them at different stages of his life and learned something invaluable from each. It occurs to him that it is they who have made him the man he is today.
Perhaps he is not alone in this. Perhaps every man is born not of one woman but many, and it is his duty to pay them tribute. Most of these female influences will be human, but some might not - an animal, a city, a river, a vocation, a passion. Not all will be benevolent and kind, some may even be harmful, such as an addiction or an affliction. In his case, the number of female presences that have marked his story is precisely thirty.
Thirty voices.

[Eric Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I need to begin with a caution I don’t usually give: Elif Shafak’s engrossing new novel spoils the ending of “Madame Bovary” in its opening pages. Many readers have asked whether they should read Flaubert’s classic first, and if you want its ending kept intact, the answer is yes. That said, I don’t think it’s essential. Shafak has said she wanted readers unfamiliar with Flaubert or the 19th century to connect with the story, and I saw one Goodreads reader who had never read “Madame Bovary” name this among her favourite books of the year. Having read Flaubert’s novel twice myself, I found it heightened my appreciation. The book opens with Emma Bovary speaking back to her creator and puts him on trial for the way he portrayed her. Much of what follows plays on that porous boundary between the creator and the created, and on where imagination lies in between.

The novel spans the whole of Flaubert’s life, from a childhood in a Rouen household that was part home, part hospital, part morgue, to his death at Croisset in 1880. He became a writer in defiance of parents who wanted him to be a doctor, then a lawyer, and he was branded the “family idiot” even though he went on to become one of France’s greatest novelists. His life is told in close third person across five life stages, each chapter named after a colour and an object. Interspersed with it are thirty sections in the voices of women, some human, some not, some living, some dead. They include Eleanor Marx, the first to translate “Madame Bovary” into English, George Sand, an Egyptian belly dancer whom biographies treat as a footnote, and, in typical Shafak fashion, the city of Istanbul, syphilis and even a camel. These voices question Gustave’s judgement and memories while forming a web of surprising connections. All of them are caught up in an age of political upheaval and face the social pressures of the time differently. The bird on the gorgeous cover of this novel is the Simurgh of Attar’s “The Conference of the Birds”, the poem that gives the novel its title. It’s also the vision Gustave sees during his epileptic fits, and it holds a secret that only becomes clear at the end.

What moved me most was the portrayal of Gustave himself, especially as a lonely, bookish child. Shafak has described this as a book about loneliness and otherness, and she has spoken of being a lonely child who found companions in books. It’s funny how young Gustave feels so connected to his father’s library that he literally starts consuming the books. The tender bond with his nursemaid Julie, whose fabulous tales spark his imagination, is a reminder of how much children need to be told stories. Shafak depicts him as a synaesthete who can taste words. Some critics have speculated about this, though it has never been proven. It recalls Arthur in “There Are Rivers in the Sky”, and it ties in with the colours that frame the novel. His perceptions are also shaped by his epilepsy and later by syphilis, and Shafak notes the period’s misconceptions that blamed epilepsy on the mother or on too much masturbation. Gustave’s fantastical sensibility, mirrored in his early reading of “Don Quixote”, blends imagination with reality. I loved the description of him wanting to be a literary lizard, warming himself all day in the sun of inspiration, which sits nicely beside his painfully slow way of writing. Above all, he is an empathetic, romantic spirit who stops to ask downtrodden people about their lives, and their stories gradually feed into the creation of Emma Bovary. As Shafak writes, “Nothing human can ever be alien to literature.”

Shafak also explores the blurred lines of gender, a recurring theme in her work and no doubt one reason Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando” is among her inspirations. A tutor presents as a man in order to move through the world and achieve professional success. In a wonderful childhood scene, Gustave and his sister swap clothes to feel what it’s like to inhabit another gender, something he later carries into slipping into the skin of Emma Bovary. There are terrifying sections too, set during revolution and mass starvation, which show how turmoil can drive mobs to act out their fears on outsiders and scapegoats. Gustave witnesses the execution of a woman wrongly convicted of murder. “Is there anything more dangerous than certainty born of ignorance?” Shafak asks, which recalls the “Malady of Certainty” in her “Three Daughters of Eve”. The novel also considers how writers take revenge: “not with punches or swords but with words.” That idea runs from Emma’s opening tirade to Shafak’s own experience of being put on trial in Turkey for words her fictional characters spoke.

Where the novel falters for me is in some of the narrative voices. I understand that giving a voice to a city or a disease extends empathy beyond the confines of human consciousness, much as the fig tree did in “The Island of Missing Trees”. But some of these sections felt too laden with research, as if a writer had gathered a mass of details and packed them into a narrative, and they took me out of the story. Some critics have noted that the voices sound too similar. (Spoilers follow.) The ending offers one answer to this: Emma returns to reveal that Gustave himself wrote all thirty voices, and in Persian si-murgh means “thirty birds”. It’s a clever and artful turn that answers Emma’s opening complaint that writers betray their characters, since Gustave became each of them and turned imagination into an act of empathy. You could also see it as a fault. A novel whose premise is to decentre the male genius ends by recentring him as the author of it all, though of course Shafak wrote everything. For me, the reveal didn’t change my sense that some voices felt manufactured rather than convincing.

None of this detracted from my enjoyment, or from the novel’s insistence that without stories we’d each be much lonelier, and that solitude, as distinct from loneliness, can be a source of strength. As Shafak put it in an interview with Prospect, “I never believe fiction is a luxury—I believe it’s existential,” and in a time of so much conflict that feels especially true. Perhaps this novel isn’t as great as “There Are Rivers in the Sky”, and how much you connect with it may depend on your tolerance for her whimsy. But it’s a wonderful meditation on artistic creation and the lives of outsiders. It also does what all great literature should and sent me looking for more. I’m keen to read Eleanor Marx’s translation of “Madame Bovary” and Lydia Davis’s from 2010, having only read Alan Russell’s, as well as “Salammbô”, which Mircea Cărtărescu cited as a major influence when I interviewed him. I’d be delighted to hear what you think of Shafak’s most recent novel and whether you read “Madame Bovary” before starting it.


Read more of my reviews on my book blog LonesomeReader or check out the videos on my BookTube channel or consider joining my Bookclub

[Joy D · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this inventive novel, Elif Shafak reimagines the life of Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary, through the women around him. Some are real and some are invented, and each one speaks in her own voice. Every story connects to the ones before it, and together they build an intimate, dreamlike reading experience.

The prose is lush and at times hypnotic, and it is a big part of why I will read anything Shafak writes. Her Author’s Note shows how much research went into the book. The historical sections capture the upheaval of nineteenth-century France and follow Flaubert on his travels through Egypt. Other parts slip into magical realism. At one point we hear from a camel, at another from someone who has just died. I loved this blend of history and imagination, and I was stunned by how beautifully Shafak weaves so many perspectives together.

Flaubert and his creation of Madame Bovary provide the bones, but the heart of the novel is why art matters when everything around us is falling apart. For every story that comes to light, many more stay silent in the dark. Shafak rescues a few of them from that silence. If you are looking for historical fiction that takes imaginative risks and speaks to our own crumbling world, pick this one up.

Many thanks to the publisher and author for providing me with an advance reader’s copy via NetGalley. This book is scheduled for publication in October 2026 in the UK and January 2027 in the US.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an unusual novel, as in some respects it reads like a creative biography of Gustave Flaubert, the 19th-century writer best known for Madame Bovary. But Shafak makes it clear in her author's note that although many of the details were based in fact, this is, rather, a fictionalized account of Flaubert's life and his dedication to literature above all else. The most creative aspect of this book, though, isn't that bending of genre but that different moments in his life are narrated by women, from his mother and sister to lovers, friends, passing acquaintances, and even a city, a camel, and his most famous character. The novel reads like a work from Flaubert's time, with a richness of language and a slower pace that are so often lacking in more modern works (and happen to be two things I love). While Flaubert faced adversity and dark times throughout his life -- failure to live up to his father's expectations, the deaths of his father and sister, war, illness, etc. -- he remained dedicated to the power of literature to uplift and give life meaning. And that is very much what was behind Shafak's thinking in writing this book, at a time when we are facing war and conflict, climate change, and uncertainty, as she notes: "Literature cannot stop wars or heal hurts, but without it, without stories, we each would be so much lonelier."

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for providing me with a digital ARC of this book in return for an honest review. This book will be published January 12, 2027.

[Sarah Kimberley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shafak’s writing has always reached into the very corners of my soul. She possesses this extraordinary gift for taking the most fragile, ephemeral human experiences and preserving them inside shimmering, material stories that feel like entire lifetimes are lived. Illuminating people and cultures distant from my own. Shafak’s eye commands worlds that feel living. Worlds like a hundred rivers meeting each other. This book gives women a fierce reclamation of history.

This was absolutely sublime and a noble effort at reimagining the life of Gustave Flaubert: a solitary writer living during the 1848 French Revolution. At first I was tentative of the plot, but Shafak paints this vast world that you can almost drink up. A sensory dervish that takes you across sweeping continents. It is both sorrowful and wonderful in equal measure. Bizarre and terribly moving. Shafak completely shatters the mirror of Flaubert’s brief history into a thousand dazzling shards. Filth and beauty dance with one another and god are we embroiled in it. The drear of Rouen where he grows up surrounded by bodies and rotten death, and the many inhabitants of his insular world. The devoted, charming nursemaid weaving folklore into the young Gustave’s mind, the mesmerizing Egyptian dancer he became enamoured by, and the fiercely jealous lover who demands immortality from the pages of history.

Gustave is like an untethered kite, floating dreamily. We too, are dreamily ferried across the sun-drenched horizons of Cairo, Palestine, Beirut, and the ancient shores of Istanbul. If I close my eyes I am there, that is how magical Shafak’s words are. Those were my favourite chapters of all. Kuchuk Hanem the exotic dancer in Esna was magnetic, even if a fleeting character. I wanted more of her. Rather than just the exotic muse of a European man and traveller, she becomes a sharp observer. All the women in this story are observers. I loved every single one of them.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elif Shafak is a wonder. With each book, she displays a level of scholarship enhanced by her curiosity, and she pursues her are of interest. In this case, the fictionalized biography of Gustav Flaubert, identified by colors and narrated by the various women in his life, starting with his famous creation. A look into the time of his life as well, this is worth reading whether the reader admires Madame Bovary or not.

[The Bookish Elf · Rating 5 out of 5]

A character who has never drawn breath opens In One Brief Moment All Eternity by Elif Shafak by accusing the man who made her of a poisoning. Emma Bovary has had one hundred and sixty-nine years to think about the arsenic, and she starts talking on page one.

What follows is not the argument you expect. This is a life of Gustave Flaubert assembled almost entirely out of women's testimony: the nursemaid who told him folk tales, the mother who could not forgive him for surviving, the dancer in Esna who gave him a shawl and something worse, the prosecutor's wife who read every book her husband banned. Thirty of them speak, in numbered chapters, and the novel withholds until its final pages exactly why the number is thirty.

The Man in the Third Person, the Women in the First

Shafak makes one structural decision early and never wavers from it. Flaubert himself is rendered in a cool, present-tense third person, chapter by chapter, each headed with a colour and an object: the yellow butterfly, the verdigris teapot, the crimson flag, the ebony bread. Every woman who interrupts him speaks in first person, and speaks for herself.

The effect is quietly devastating and takes a while to register. He is the one being observed, catalogued, described. They are the ones with interiority. A novelist famous for the sentence "Madame Bovary, c'est moi" spends four hundred pages being watched by people he assumed were scenery.

Not all of the thirty narrators in In One Brief Moment All Eternity by Elif Shafak are human. Istanbul narrates a chapter as one enormous unspooling sentence and ends it with a piece of information Flaubert took home with him. Opium introduces itself as the Brown Fairy. Syphilis has a chapter. So does Jamilah, a camel who appears first at a provincial circus and later in the Paris zoo during the siege, and whose account of her own end is the single hardest page in the book. That Shafak can move from a bacterium to a bereaved baker without the register cracking is the technical achievement here.

Five Parts, One Long Illness

The frame is a life in five stages, from childhood at the Hotel-Dieu in Rouen, where the young Gustave climbs a trellis to look at cadavers in his father's dissection theatre, through the Paris law years, the Egyptian voyage, the obscenity trial of 1857, and the long decline at Croisset. Readers who come to In One Brief Moment All Eternity by Elif Shafak for the writing life will find it: the five years of composition, the shouting of sentences aloud, the mercury pills that make his gums bleed.

What they may not expect is how much of the book is about illness and political violence. Epilepsy structures the whole novel, since every appearance of the mythical Simurgh turns out to be attached to a seizure. The Paris Commune occupies most of Part Four, and the chapter narrated by a baker shot at Pere Lachaise, who becomes a ghost and follows Flaubert through the graves trying to make him hear her, is the best thing in the book by some distance.

The title of In One Brief Moment All Eternity by Elif Shafak comes from Attar's The Conference of the Birds, which Flaubert buys in a Smyrna bazaar in Part Three. Anyone who knows what si-murgh means in Persian will see the ending coming a long way off. That does not spoil it. It makes the last chapter land harder.

What Works
The ventriloquism. Eleanor Marx, who really did produce the first English translation of Madame Bovary, gets a chapter of extraordinary pressure, moving between dock strikes, her father's concealed son, and a novel she rereads three times and understands differently each time. It reads like nobody else in the book.
The physical world. Rouen smells of ether and river mud; Esna smells of rose otto and dust. Shafak keeps her sensory detail specific and unshowy, and it does most of the historical work without a single lecture.
Caroline. The niece Flaubert raised gets the coolest and cruellest testimony of the thirty, and her account of what she later did with his manuscripts turns the novel's argument about censorship inside out.
The last fifty pages. A vision, an old Persian poem, and a diagnosis modern medicine did not have a name for until the 1990s, folded together without a wasted movement.
Where It Stumbles
Not every voice earns its number. A few testimonies run three pages and function as historical footnotes rather than people. The chorus is strongest when a woman has a grievance and weakest when she has only information.
The Commune chapters lecture. Shafak's own convictions about political extremism arrive in long authorial paragraphs that step away from Flaubert entirely. They are convincing and they are also the place where the novel most obviously stops being a novel.
The thesis gets stated. A scene in which a young critic publishes an article asking why Flaubert's female characters never speak explains the book's design out loud, several hundred pages after we had understood it.
The aphorisms accumulate. Some are superb. Some read like the wisdom-literature register Shafak has always been drawn to, and by Part Five they arrive faster than they can be absorbed.
Who Should Read In One Brief Moment All Eternity by Elif Shafak

Reach for it if you like polyphonic historical fiction, novels about how books get made, or any book that hands the microphone to whoever the record ignored. Skip it if you want a conventional biographical novel with a single narrative line, or if 1870s French political history sounds like homework.

The Last Word on In One Brief Moment All Eternity by Elif Shafak

Ambitious books usually pay for their ambition somewhere, and this one pays for it in a slack middle stretch and a handful of narrators who exist to fill a slot. What it buys with that spending is a final movement of real beauty, and an argument about literature that it earns rather than asserts: that a story can outlive the storyteller, and that the people written into the margins were never as quiet as the margins made them look. Flaubert said talent was only a long patience. So, it turns out, is being heard.

[Katerina · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, thoughtful, and deeply moving book

Elif Shafak is one of those authors I return to again and again, even when I know she will ask something of me as a reader. Her books are not always easy to read—not because the writing is difficult, but because her ideas linger. They make you pause, question, feel, and sometimes look at the world a little differently.

In One Brief Moment All Eternity is no exception.

What I loved most about this book is the way Shafak manages to take big, almost impossible ideas—time, memory, love, loss, identity, and the strange connections between human beings—and bring them down to something intimate and deeply human. Her writing has a quiet beauty to it. There are passages that made me stop and reread them, simply because they carried more feeling than I expected.

This is not a book I would describe as a quick or effortless read. It asks you to slow down and stay with it. But that is also part of its magic. Shafak trusts her readers to sit with uncertainty, to follow unexpected paths, and to allow meaning to reveal itself gradually.

And beneath all the ideas and layers, there is so much heart.

I found myself thinking about the book long after I had put it down. There is something wonderfully human in Shafak’s storytelling—the sense that our lives may be brief, but the connections we make can reach far beyond the moment in which they happen.

As always with Elif Shafak, I finished the book with more questions than answers, but somehow that felt exactly right.

A beautiful, reflective, and quietly powerful read for anyone who enjoys literary fiction that asks you not only to read, but to feel and think.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an advance reader copy. All opinions are my own.

[suzannah ♡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

so so so so so SO good!!!!!!!!!!! elif is one of the greatest writers to ever exist.

[Kate O'Shea · Rating 4.75 out of 5]

I feel mean giving this book 4.75 but it is simply because I didn't adore it quite as much as There Are Rivers in the Sky. It is still a beautiful book though.

In One Brief Moment is a love letter to literature by way of the life of Gustave Flaubert and, more importantly, the women who shaped his life.

The story tells the whole of Flaubert's life from his childhood trying to please his father even though he is so different that they call him an idiot, through his college years and first loves and failures to his adult life when his writing gives him joy but also gets him into trouble.

As Flaubert grows we meet a myriad of women including Julie the maid, his first real love Louise, Emma Bovary and even Jamilah the camel. They tell their stories and we see how Flaubert's life was altered by each.

Not only that but we have this beautiful novel set at a time of great upheaval in France with the Paris Commune and the siege which starved so many to death.

Flaubert is an interesting character and this book made me want to read Madam Bovary all over again. I admit I cried at the end.

Elif Shafak is a master storyteller. Her characters shine off the page and every part of this book is so carefully crafted. I wanted to read it in one sitting but never finish it. I love that she told so many women's stories in a book about a man. So very clever.

Thsnkyou very much to Netgalley and Yazmeen Akhtar at Viking for the digital review copy. Very much appreciated.

Highly recommended. Another female writer who can do no wrong.

[Karen Mace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow!!! This is a staggering piece of work and I adored every single page of it!!

I did think I wouldn't get on with this book as I've never read Madame Bovary (shame on me!) but knew of the story, but I'm completely smitten now and will be rushing out to get a copy of that book very soon as the author has made me want to learn more of Gustave Flaubert and read all he's ever written!

This is really the story of Gustave but brilliantly told by the women, and things!, that inhabited his world - be that the women around him in his family, or that he met, or by the character he created with his writing, even illnesses get to share their thoughts on their time with the author - it's such a creative way of telling a story that I was under its' spell within the first couple of chapters!

It tells of his life from childhood onwards, through the eyes of others watching him from a very misunderstood child just because he was inquisitive and imaginative, to his time at boarding school, his studies in France, the family tragedies, his writing career - it's all here and what a story it is to tell!

Each character we meet in themselves is such an interesting character to hear from, and I don't know how the author does it, but there's not one weak link between them! The freshness and insight is high from the first page to the last and this is the kind of book that is worthy of any prize that comes its' way - already in my most favourites of this year, and maybe ever!!

An extraordinary piece of writing - a MUST read!!!

[Mainlinebooker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, how I wish there were ten stars to bestow upon this extraordinary novel, for five seem woefully inadequate. At 608 pages, In One Brief Moment All Eternity is hardly a modest undertaking, yet I found myself wishing it were twice as long. Rarely have I encountered a work of fiction so exquisitely rendered, so intellectually stimulating, and so emotionally absorbing that I wanted not merely to read it, but to inhabit it. I became utterly immersed in the cadence of its prose, surrendering to sentences of such breathtaking beauty that I frequently paused simply to savor their construction. Every word seemed meticulously chosen, every image illuminated by an almost painterly sensibility. I did not so much turn the pages as disappear into them, feeling the boundaries between reader and narrative dissolve.

With astonishing imaginative dexterity, Elif Shafak reconstructs and reimagines the life of Gustave Flaubert, from his unconventional childhood to his death in 1880 at the age of fifty-eight. Yet while Flaubert provides the novel's historical and intellectual foundation, it is his most enduring literary creation, Emma Bovary, who exerts an almost gravitational pull upon the narrative. Born of Flaubert's imagination, Emma becomes something far greater than a fictional character: she is a haunting presence, an embodiment of desire, disillusionment, and the insatiable human yearning for a life beyond the confines of ordinary existence. The relationship between creator and creation becomes a fascinating meditation on the mysteries of artistic invention. Who, ultimately, possesses whom? Does the novelist breathe life into his characters, or do they acquire an existence so powerful that they begin to shape the consciousness of their creator?

The novel's architecture is itself a marvel. Rather than adhering to the conventions of linear historical fiction, Shafak constructs an intricate mosaic of perspectives, entrusting successive chapters to an astonishing assortment of narrators: women both historical and imagined, a camel, and even such unlikely entities as opium and syphilis. In less accomplished hands, such audacious experimentation might have descended into literary gimmickry. Here, however, each voice contributes another facet to an ever-expanding portrait of a man, an era, and a civilization wrestling with its contradictions. What might have been a fragmented collection of episodes instead unfolds with remarkable fluidity, the disparate threads woven into a tapestry of extraordinary richness and coherence.

Equally mesmerizing is the historical world that Shafak resurrects with such immediacy. We encounter Flaubert's peculiar upbringing in a household intimately connected to a hospital and morgue, where suffering, mortality, and the fragility of the human body were woven into daily existence. We witness his struggle with epilepsy, the political upheavals of nineteenth-century France, and his travels through Egypt and the broader Middle East, including Istanbul, Cairo, Beirut, and Palestine. We are confronted with the ravages of syphilis and the often barbaric medical interventions employed in its treatment. The historical detail is frequently astonishing, yet never feels inserted merely to demonstrate the author's prodigious research. Instead, it is so seamlessly absorbed into the narrative that I felt transported across time and geography, standing beside Flaubert, observing the people who shaped his imagination, and experiencing the intellectual and sensual tumult of his world.

But what elevates this novel beyond even the finest examples of historical fiction is its profound philosophical resonance. Beneath its sumptuous prose and dazzling narrative invention lies a searching examination of art, mortality, longing, illness, and the uneasy relationship between the individual and a world perpetually in turmoil. How does one continue to create beauty in the presence of suffering? How does one sustain hope when society appears to be unraveling? What solace can literature offer against the inevitability of loss? These meditations reverberated with particular force for me, their echoes unmistakably relevant to the fractured and often bewildering world we inhabit today. Shafak reminds us that while history changes its costumes, the essential struggles of the human spirit remain remarkably constant.

Perhaps the greatest testament to the novel's achievement is that it made me fall in love with the very act of reading. I have read countless books that captivated me through suspense, memorable characters, or compelling historical revelations. Far fewer have exerted such a powerful pull through language alone. There were passages I wanted to reread immediately, not because their meaning eluded me, but because I could scarcely bear to leave their beauty behind.

If I were to offer one reservation, it would be that the novel's very ambition occasionally threatens to overwhelm it. The multiplicity of narrators, the abundance of historical detail, and the philosophical digressions sometimes interrupt the narrative's momentum, demanding patience and a willingness to surrender to its unconventional structure. Readers seeking a tightly plotted historical novel may find themselves occasionally adrift. Yet what some might regard as narrative excess, I experienced largely as an invitation to linger, to absorb the richness of a world too intricately imagined to be hurried through.

And perhaps therein lies the true measure of this novel's achievement: despite its occasional indulgences, I never wanted to leave its pages. I finished feeling profoundly grateful for the hours of intellectual and emotional immersion it afforded me, and for a writer capable of reminding me why literature matters so deeply. To future readers, I offer this entreaty: allow yourself to surrender to its rhythms. Savor the language, embrace the unexpected perspectives, and let the narrative unfold on its own terms. I suspect that, like me, you will find yourself simultaneously savoring and devouring its pages, caught between the desire to discover what comes next and the equally powerful wish that the experience might never end.

Shafak has accomplished something rare: a novel of formidable intellectual ambition that is equally a triumph of literary artistry. Its occasional excesses are eclipsed by the sheer brilliance of its execution. This is literature at its finest, a work that deserves to be read, celebrated, and remembered. An unequivocal masterpiece. Ten stars, without hesitation.

ps. I immediately went out and bought a copy of Madame Bovary.


Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in return for an honest review.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second book that I have read by Elif Shafak, I read All the rivers in the sky previously and which I loved. So, I was excited to receive a copy of One brief moment in eternity.
I found the author’s writing style has changed in this one. It is the story about the life of Gustave Flaubert who wrote Madame Bovary. Unfortunately, I have not read the book, so I didn’t know what to expect. I found it quite an interesting read. Reading about Gustave childhood. How he was supposed to do right by his parents. But they ignored him and he led a lonely life and animals and insects and books where his friend.
Don’t get me wrong, I did find this interesting I was turning the pages, but I found it quite the storyline slow. Nothing really happened in it, and I found it long and over descriptive. 3 stars from me.

[Siobhan (sib_reads) · Rating 2.5 out of 5]

🫣🫣😭😭

oh I am so sorry to say that this did not hit the same as Rivers or Trees

drtc

[Tev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elif Shafak has done it again! One Brief Moment All Eternity did not dissapoint.
I went into this novel with high expectations and Im so happy to say that it was everything I hoped for. It's such a privilege to have had the chance to read this beautiful book as an advance reader before its publication. I loved the way Elif Shafak explores the world surrounding Gustave Flaubert, bringing the women in his life and the women he imagined into the foreground. There is something so compelling about giving these women a voice and allowing us to see beyond the famous author himself. Shafak has such a wonderful way of blurring the boundaries between history, fiction and imagination, creating a story that feels both intimate and expansive.

Some authors simply have a way of reaching into your heart through words and Elif Shafak is one of them. A beautiful reminder why Elif Shafak remains one of my favourite authors.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC. #InOneBriefMomentAllEternity #NetGalley.

[Pearl · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that changes your perspective forever.

[Miruna · Rating 4 out of 5]

In One Brief Moment All Eternity by Elif Shafak is a quiet but deeply emotional story. I loved the way it looks at the passing of time and how certain moments, memories and people can stay with us long after they’re gone.

The story has a beautiful, almost dreamlike quality, and Shafak’s writing makes even the simplest moments feel meaningful. It’s not a fast-paced read, but I enjoyed taking my time with it. Thoughtful, emotional and beautifully written. A quiet book with a lot of heart.

[Jaclyn]

Shafak’s signature lush and rich storytelling is on full display as she conjures the life and times of Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary is a seminal text for me so this was always going to ignite something special. I’d be curious to hear from readers less attached to Flaubert about how they feel. Shafak shines in this kaleidoscopic polysymphonic multi-voice love letter to the written word and she gives voice to those who have been silenced. This book will be too much for many readers I suspect but in a world of dwindling attention spans I want to be held by rich maximalist storytelling more than ever. Give yourself over I say.

[Ellen · Rating 3.75 out of 5]

Inhaledddddd this on a flight home. Really good, a bit slow at times. She's a very lyrical writer.

[Jeff Hanson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elif Shafak's is proving herself to be one of this era's greatest writers. While at the surface In One Brief Moment All Eternity is a fictionalized biography of French writer Gustave Flaubert, it is also Shafak's "love letter to literature." Shafak poses the premise of her story early on...."If only Gustave Flaubert himself were to become a fictional character inside a novel; his mind, body and soul, his love affairs and heartbreaks all subject to interpretation - and inevitably, misinterpretation." In any other writer's hands, trying to incorporate thirty different voices to shed light on the main narrative would seem contrived, a gimmick, but Shafak uses this technique to bring a wholesome well-rounded perspective to the story, and helps illuminate the lives and perspectives of those that would otherwise traditionally be voiceless. Whether it is via a corpse, a circus performer, a camel, or a princess, Shafak can be trusted to not only hold the reader's attention, but to make the reader feel emotion and connection to this story, these wonderful characters, and this not so long ago time period that isn't that different than our own. In her afterword Shafak asks "How can one sustain the optimism, the faith, the daily effort to create imaginary stories, at times spending an entire afternoon searching for the perfect synonym, or rephrasing a single sentence, when real-life events are so much more urgent?" Thank God she does, as it is through literature like this that we can empathize with others, and see the common threads of history. As she probes Flaubert's reasons for writing, she exposes her own. Shafak is an open-hearted writer, writing often of imperfect characters without judgment, shedding light on horrific moments in history, not to be sensationalist, but to inspire hope that may prevent us from making the same mistakes again.

[Ben Dutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

In One Brief Moment All Eternity is the latest novel from Elif Shafak and it is another tour-de-force, a polyphonic novel which tells the story of Gustave Flaubert as seen through the prism of the women that have known him, passed paths with him - and even that have come from his imagination (here's looking at you Madame Bovary). It is utterly extraordinary in scope and imagination, with distinct characters voicing the story. As usual Shafak's writing is like liquid gold, and I revelled in her craft, thoroughly entranced. This is not a quick read - it demands your attention - but if you surrender to it, In One Brief Moment All Eternity is a masterpiece.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC.

[Vlada (Vladkabooks) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Happy publication day to this beauty! I have 0 hesitation that it is a 5-star read for me and is defenitely one of my favourite books of the year and even ever.

What may seem like a novel about Gustave Flaubert is not just about him. It something much richer: a story about the women who influenced him, inspired him, challenged him, and, in many ways, helped shape the writer he became. I especially enjoyed how these women's voices were brought to the forefront, all thirty of them.

One of my favourite aspects of the novel was how vividly it recreates the nineteenth century. The historical events, political tensions, and cultural atmosphere are described in such an engaging way that I often felt completely transported into that world. It is the kind of historical fiction that makes the past feel alive rather than distant.

This was also one of those rare books that made me want to pause and learn more as I read. I finished it feeling that I had gained a much deeper appreciation of Flaubert, French history, literature, and even the role of colour, art, and imagination in shaping how people see the world.

Beautifully written, immersive, and thought-provoking, this is a novel that celebrates literature while also asking whose stories are remembered and whose are forgotten. For me, it was the perfect combination of an engrossing story and an opportunity to learn something new. A truly wonderful read.

I would love to thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-arc for review

[Serendipity · Rating 5 out of 5]

In One Brief Moment All Eternity, an imagined retelling of the life of French novellist Gustave Flaubert, is another stunning novel from Elif Shafak. It paints a compelling portrait of the author - a gentle, sensitive observant and emotional boy, a reader but not an academic scholar, seen as something of a failure for not living up to his family's expectations and exacting standards, someone who was driven to collect stories from anyone, regardless of their class or gender. This is not a short novel but I never felt the length, luxuriating in Shafak's richly detailed, unhurried storytelling, and her lush prose. I loved the distinctive structure and style Shafak utilised. The novel is divided into five main sections from The Colours of Childhood to The Colours of Old Age. Within this chronological structure are episodic chapters, each titled for an object and its colour - The Yellow Butterfly, The Cerulean Notebook, The Brown Fairy, The Periwinkle Plume and The Pearl-white Coffin etc. It was fun imagining how the object would connect to Flaubert's life and then awaiting its appearance in the chapter. These chapters were written in the third person. Thirty of these chapters were followed by first person narratives from females associated with Flaubert. Some of these were major figures in his life including his mother, his nursemaid, and his lover. Others were women whose paths only briefly crossed Flaubert's - a tutor, a cleaner, a bellydancer, a woman facing the guillotine, and the prosecutor's wife - or were entirely less conventional narrators including a corpse, opium, Istanbul, syphilis, and Jamilah the camel. The first and last female perspective came from Emma Bovary herself. These sections helped place Flaubert's life in a wider context, giving insight into different aspects of French and Middle Eastern society. And they were a clever counterpoint to Madam Bovary - giving female perspectives on the life of the male author, showing how women influenced the man who imagined the life of a memorable female protagonist. And speaking of Madam Bovary, you do not have to have read it to enjoy Shafak's novel. I was sure I had, but as I read I realised I was mistaken. I rectified this omission after completing In One Brief Moment. I enjoyed Madam Bovary, a cautionary tale against living beyond your means if ever there was one, and was amused, and slightly bemused, by the scandal it created in its day. Any increased appreciation I gained for IOBMAL, however, was only at the margins. It's a masterpiece that stands entirely independently on its own merits. A richly detailed exploration of Flaubert's life, it also reinforces to readers the power and importance of literature, storytelling and the written word, whilst also reminding us how every person we meet has the power to positively shape us (and us them) - both important messages for our times. In One Brief Moment All Eternity is an outstanding novel that will be one of the highlights of my reading year.

[halfserious · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

Oh, boy. I could write an extremely long review about this book, but I doubt anyone would want to read it after tackling the book itself, and if you’re only gearing up to read it, don’t waste your time with my review because you will need all of it, as well as your strength and a cup (or ten) of tea to get through it. Despondent as my description of this experience might sound, however, it’s so, so worth it!

The dust jacket (metaphorical, of course, I read an e-book ARC and I couldn’t possibly tell you if the physical book itself will have one or not?) enlightens you, in a nutshell, that this is the (obviously) fictional reimagining and retelling of Gustave Flaubert’s life, told from the perspective of various women that have shaped his life in a meaningful way. What it doesn’t tell you is that all these women seem to be blessed with the most brilliantly raging case of ADHD you’ll ever come across in a literary endeavour (mine mostly manifests in abandoning knitting projects halfway through and always adding too many parentheses in every text I write), and it shines through so brightly you frequently forget what (or who) you’re supposed to be here for. The key idea here, of course, is “supposed to”, because the whole premise of the book hinges on the notion that people (most often women) in the shadows are just as vital and crucial than the ones history won’t shut up about.

Now, I’ll readily admit that I have an axe to grind with Flaubert - as it happens, mainly because I had to read Madame Bovary in its original French and then read numerous essays portraying her as the worst literary heroine that has ever been brought to life, seemingly because … she basically wanted more than what she was dealt, which you can hardly blame her for, and then tried to make up for it with a series of catastrophic decisions, which makes it slightly easier to vilify her. Twenty odd years later (counting from my experience, not from when Madame Bovary was first published…), someone has finally taken it up to balance the scales and present a possible other side of the story, and I’m grateful that this someone also happens to be a skillful writer with a wonderfully rich and vivid imagination, creating a world that could hardly be more different than the one we have known for so long.

On the surface, this book is about Flaubert but please, don’t let this deter you if you’re not interested in a fictional biography about another pompous, self-important, navel-gazing white man because it’s not really about him, and you’ll come out on the other side richer than any words can describe.

Thank you to NetGalley, Penguin UK and Elif Shafak for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

[Val Robson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a truly epic book from Elif Shafak. On one hand I struggled to get through it as it is long, full of description and rich history of France and further afield in the nineteenth century. On the other hand I was immersed in the stories of the many characters and loved how many were linked as you got further though the book.

The central character is Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary and many other novels. It follows Gustave's life from his family wanting him have a noble profession such as doctor, like his father and older brother, or failing that a lawyer. However, Gustave thinks and feels completely different from them and just wants to write. He often thinks and feels in colours and tastes which is illustrated by several very unusual events in his life. He learns of the effect that his writing can have on others at an early age. when he reads a scary story he's written to school boys His family mix with the wealthy and well-thought of people in Rouen, their hometown. Gustave is not the slightest interested in such people and wants only to mix with peasants, the downbeat, the mentally unwell, those on the fringe of society and the like.

In true Elif Shafak style, we hear the point of view of thirty people in the novel - except not all are people - some are diseases, animals, objects or even a city. All are female.

The research that Elif Shafak must have done to write this book is astounding in it's own right. It must have taken years and she must have read well over a hundred books on the various subjects covered. I frequently got distracted as I wanted to learn more about a person or an event mentioned - whether it was true or fiction or a bit of both. There is a very interesting section as an appendix where Elif elaborates on how she has used historical reality and often changed it to fit into her novel. Because the distractions were taking me away so much I read the latter half more swiftly but think one day I will reread this amazing book. Then I will spend more time taking in the things I missed the first time, in particular about the politics in France and their various revolutions.

With thanks to NetGalley and Penguin General UK for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Priyam Atter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elif Shafak is quite simply, a master storyteller. I have been spellbound by her work ever since I read The Island of Missing Trees. I was therefore overjoyed to receive an advanced e-copy of In One Brief Moment All Eternity. My sincere thanks to Penguin Books.

Shafak documents the life of French writer Gustave Flaubert. In this narrative, Flaubert’s life story is told through thirty female perspectives, some of them women and some - in true Shafak style - inhuman - be it animal, bacterial or national. In any other hands, this task would be dubious at best, but Shafak is adept at interweaving storytelling with magical realism, and rest assured, her latest installment is no exception. 

In One Breif Moment All Eternity, Shafak strives to remedy historically male centered narratives - and storytelling - by allowing marginalised and underrepresented voices to depict the life of an infamous man. And by viewing our protagonist through the first person perspectives of the disenfranchised, the reader is offered a far truer insight into Flaubert’s character than would be achieved through other narrative means. It is testament to Shafak’s skill that despite never offering Flaubert a first person narrative, I felt I had a deep appreciation and understanding of our multi-faceted and gloriously imperfect protagonist. 

Flaubert’s life story traverses decades, continents and key historical events and through this all, his unremitting compulsion to write shines through. Shafak’s exploration of an author’s calling is compelling and I was content to be led by her gentle meander through Flaubert’s life. Once more, Shafak seamlessly threads historical research into her narrative, and segments relating to the Siege of Paris were - although harrowing to witness - particularly captivating and informative.

The sheer joy, importance and beauty of literature during turbulent times is examined throughout this narrative and such a message is as timely as ever. I believe every Shafak novel is a celebration of humanity and nature and though these threads are very much present throughout this book, Shafak’s latest novel is also a love letter to the wonder of literature and those that bring this art form to the world.