an acclaimed turkish novelists personal account of balancing a writers life with a mothers life after the birth of her first child in 2006 turkish writer elif shafek suffered from postpartum depression that triggered a profound personal crisis infused with guilt anxiety and bewilderment about whether she could ever be a good mother shafak stopped writing and lost her faith in words altogether in this elegantly written memoir she retraces her journey from freespirited nomadic artist to dedicated but emotionally wrought mother identifying a constantly bickering harem of women who live inside of her each with her own characteristicsthe cynical intellectual the goaloriented gogetter the practicalrational the spiritual the maternal and the lustfulshe craves harmony or at least a unifying identity as she intersperses her own experience with the lives of prominent authors such as sylvia plath virginia woolf alice walker ayn rand and zelda fitzgerald shafak looks for a solution to the inherent conflict between artistic creation and responsible parenting with searing emotional honesty and an incisive examination of cultural mores within patriarchal societies shafak has rendered an important work about literature motherhood and spiritual wellbeing