Frankfurt Book Fair 2024: Elif Shafak Offers Literature as an Antidote for an Ill World

"It's a very strange time to be alive. It's a strange time to be a writer," Shafak said, in the opening press conference of this year's Fair. "In a world that remains deeply polarized and bitterly politicized and torn apart by inequality and wars and the cruelty that we are capable of inflicting upon each other... one might ask: ‘What can writers and poets even hope to achieve?'"

The author, whose works often explore themes of human rights, freedom of expression, and identity, emphasized the distinction between information, knowledge, and wisdom in the digital age. "We live in a world in which we have way too much information, but little knowledge and even less wisdom," Shafak observed. "And I think we need to change that ratio."