Book Review Illustration for the FT Weekend.

In One Brief Moment All Eternity — Elif Shafak gives voice to Flaubert’s women. The oft-overlooked women from the French author’s life and novels converge to weave an inventive narrative of multiple viewpoints.

What is the function of literature in turbulent times? Elif Shafak asked herself this question as she brainstormed a subject for her latest novel. It drew her to the life of Gustave Flaubert, who wrote in the wake of the French Revolution of 1848, which ushered in the shortlived Second Republic before a return to imperial rule in 1852. In One Brief Moment All Eternity alternates between a close third-person narration of Flaubert’s life and the first-person perspectives of 30 female characters. Some of the women were real, including family members, his nanny, and the author George Sand, with whom he enjoyed a late-life correspondence. There’s also Eleanor Marx, the first to translate Madame Bovary into English, who copied its heroine’s tragic fate by swallowing poison. Others, such as an acrobat and a belly dancer, came from “a dream world”.

Thank you to ADs Chris Tosic and Jo Cochrane