[]
The Gaze
  • Published: 24 June 2015
  • ISBN: 9780241201916
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $30.00

The Gaze

Formats & editions
Paperback
24 June 2015
EBook
20 Oct 2010
Buy from…
The Nile Mighty Ape BookHub Whitcoulls The Warehouse Paper Plus Fishpond Book Hero Unity Books University Book Shop Find Local Retailers

A beautiful and compelling novel that considers the damage which can be inflicted by our simple desire to look at others

An obese woman and her lover, a dwarf, are sick of being stared at wherever they go, and so decide to reverse roles. The man goes out wearing make-up and the woman draws a moustache on her face. But while the woman wants to hide away from the world, the man meets the stares from passers-by head on, compiling his 'Dictionary of Gazes' to explore the boundaries between appearance and reality.

Intertwined with the story of a bizarre freak-show organized in Istanbul in the 1880s, The Gaze is a humorous and carnivalesque exploration of what it means to look and be looked at...
  • Published: 24 June 2015
  • ISBN: 9780241201916
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $30.00
Categories:

About the author

Elif Shafak

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’.
ES

Also by Elif Shafak

There are Rivers in the Sky
The Island of Missing Trees
A Ghostly Little Book
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World
Three Daughters of Eve
The Architect's Apprentice
The Bastard of Istanbul
See all

Praise for The Gaze

Beautifully evoked

The Times

Original and compelling

TLS

Plays with ideas of beauty and ugliness like they're Rubik's cubes

Helen Oyeyemi

Entertaining and affecting

Publishers’ Weekly

Elif Shafak is the best author to come out of Turkey in the last decade

Orhan Pamuk

A gorgeous novel: worldly, intriguing, raucous yet elegant, teeming with love and cruelty - and brilliantly alive

A.D. Miller

Shafak's novel is a carefully crafted work of imagination... [it] will confirm Shafak's reputation as a writer of impressive range, who is not afraid to ask the big questions

Financial Times

Shafak paints a gorgeous picture of a city teeming with secrets, intrigue and romance. Lush

The Times

Vividly evoked, beautifully written... this edifying novel shows how hate and envy destroy, and how love might build the world anew

Observer

Shafak blends historical fiction, urban politics and youthful curiosity in an elaborate map of Turkey whose key is the book itself

Guardian