Black Milk On Motherhood and Writing

<p><i>Black Milk</i> is the affecting and beautifully written memoir on motherhood and writing by Turkey's bestselling female writer Elif Shafak, author of <i>Honour</i>, <i>The Gaze</i> and <i>The Bastard of Istanbul</i> which was long-listed for the Orange prize. <p>Postpartum depression affects millions of new mothers every year, and- like most of its victims- Elif Shafak never expected to be one of them. <p>But after the birth of her first child in 2006, the internationally bestselling Turkish author remembers how "for the first time my adult life . . . words wouldn't speak to me". <p>As her despair finally eased, Shafak sought to resuscitate her writing life by chronicling her own experiences. <p>In her intimate memoir, she reveals how she struggled to overcome her depression and how literature provided the salvation she so desperately needed. <p>'An intimate, affecting memoir . . . Her passion for literature is contagious, and her struggle with postpartum depression and writer's block reinforces how carefully all of us must tread. Beautifully rendered, Shafak's <i>Black Milk</i> is an epic poem to women everywhere' Colleen Mondor</p>