Three Daughters of Eve

by Elif Shafak

Compassion never came as an afterthought: it was either spontaneous or absent entirely.

Early on she learned that there was no fight more hurtful than a family fight, and no family fight more hurtful than one over God.

‘The prevailing question whether God exists elicits one of the most tedious, unproductive and ill-advised disputations in which otherwise intelligent people have been engaged. We have seen, all too often, that neither theists nor atheists are ready to abandon the Hegemony of Certainty.

‘Because I am not a purist. It inhibits intellectual progress.’