In One Brief Moment All Eternity

In In One Brief Moment All Eternity, Elif Shafak reimagines the life and legacy of Gustave Flaubert through the women who surrounded him, inspired him, and were too often pushed to the margins. Beginning with the creation of Madame Bovary and the question of what it means to write a woman into history, the novel gives voice to figures both real and fictional, including a devoted nursemaid, an Egyptian dancer, and a passionate lover determined not to be erased. Moving across decades and continents, Shafak traces a path from Flaubert’s unusual childhood home, part household, part hospital, part morgue, to revolutionary Paris and onwards to Istanbul, Cairo, Palestine and Beirut. It’s a novel about storytelling itself: who gets remembered, who is silenced, and how literature can endure through upheaval, war and injustice. Useful additional information Author: Elif Shafak