Ideas worth spreading

The politics of fiction

2,618,237 views | Elif Shafak • TEDGlobal 2010

Listening to stories widens the imagination; telling them lets us leap over cultural walls, embrace different experiences, feel what others feel. Elif Shafak builds on this simple idea to argue that fiction can overcome identity politics.

Listening to stories widens the imagination; telling them lets us leap over cultural walls, embrace different experiences, feel what others feel. Elif Shafak builds on this simple idea to argue that fiction can overcome identity politics.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

About the speaker

Elif Shafak

Novelist, political scientist

See speaker profile

One of the most unique novelists in today's world literature, Elif Shafak's writing blends East and West, feminism and memory, the local and the global, bringing the periphery to the centre, giving voice to the voiceless and the disempowered.

Learn more

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.