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The Gaze
By Elif Shafak
0 - Used - good
Description
Shafak explores the subject of body image and desirability in women and men. An overweight woman and her lover; a dwarf are sick of being stared at wherever they go so they decide to reverse roles. The man goes out wearing make up and the woman draws a moustache on her face.
The couple deal with the gaze of passersby in different ways. The woman wants to hide away from the world while the man meets it head on even compiling his own 'Dictionary of the Gaze' to show how powerful an effect a simple glance can have on a person's life.
The narrative of The Gaze is intertwined with the dwarf's dictionary entries and the story of a bizarre freak-show organized in Istanbul in the 1880s as Shafak explores the damage our desire simply to look at people can do.
'Elif Shafak's The Gaze about a romance between a huge woman and a dwarf plays with ideas of beauty and ugliness like they're Rubik's cubes.' Helen Oyeyemi author of The Icarus Girl
'The Gaze is an effective often painful rumination on the appearance and the reality of dreams.' The Telegraph 27 May 2006
'Shafak probes the many ironies of appearance and perception with entertaining and affecting results.' Publishers' Weekly 19 June 2006
'Shafak is more than a worthy heir to Isabel Allende's brand of magical realism. A quiet intelligence underpins the novel's flamboyant surrealism.' The Independent 30 June 2006
'The author is the hottest young writer in Turkey and the background of her strange novel is beautifully evoked but her preoccupations are universal. Human beings long to look to stare to gaze at anything that makes them curious. Sometimes the pitiless gazes of others can flay like knives. A fat woman and a dwarf become lovers drawn togethe...
Product details
- Binding:
- Paperback
- Languages:
- Published: English , Original: Turkish
- Number of Pages:
- 264
- Publisher:
- Boyars
- Publication Date:
- 2006-07-01
- Weight:
- 204 g
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