Binding: Paperback
Date Published: 15 Oct 2026
FROM THE BOOKER AND WOMEN'S-PRIZE SHORTLISTED AUTHOR OF THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY AND THE ISLAND OF MISSING TREES - AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOW
During a time of great turmoil, Gustave Flaubert created literature's most scandalous heroine: Madame Bovary. He then poisoned her with arsenic. But what if, 175 years later, Emma - and the women history overlooked - could seize the quill from his hands and tell a different story?
In One Brief Moment All Eternity is a luminous reinvention of an iconic male writer, told through the eyes of the women - real and fictional - who shaped him: a devoted nursemaid, an Egyptian dancer and a passionate, jealous lover who refuses to be forgotten. Through their voices, visionary author Elif Shafak creates both an intimate portrait of a great artist and an epic meditation on storytelling itself: who gets remembered, who gets erased, and how can literature endure through political upheaval, war and injustice? When the world feels broken, how do we find the hope to carry on?
Shafak takes readers on an extraordinary journey through time and space, from Flaubert's unusual childhood in a house that was part home, part hospital, part morgue, to nineteenth-century Paris during the Revolution, and onwards to Istanbul, Cairo, Palestine and Beirut. In this exhilarating tale, the questions at the heart of her work take on a thrilling new urgency: who gets to speak, and what would the silenced have said?
Boldly inventive, transporting and illuminating, spanning decades and continents, In One Brief Moment All Eternity is a dazzling love letter to literature, untold stories, neglected communities and the enduring spirit of humanity.
'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
'One of the best writers in the world today' HANIF KUREISHI
'I read this beautiful, polyphonic, learned, deeply absorbing book in a trance of pleasure. Despite the suffering, political violence, illness, death, and cultural stupidities that shape this story of a literary hero and his tremendous, if blinkered, heroine, I closed the novel with a feeling of gratitude for the abiding power of literature and its transformative magic.' SIRI HUSTVEDT