Essay: Goodbye to All That: Elif Shafak




Radio 3 Essay show

Summary: Taking Robert Graves' phrase Goodbye to All That as their starting point, five writers from countries involved in the First World War reflect on a turning point moment in their own histories and interpret the phrase with the ambiguity that Graves intended. These five essays that have been curated by writer Lavinia Greenlaw to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War One, as part of 14-18 Now, a major cultural programme across the United Kingdom. Here, Elif Shafak contemplates a point of no return in the history of her native country, Turkey.