A Flaubert Novel Told Through Emma Bovary, Opium and a Camel

A 600-page novel with chapters narrated by Opium, Syphilis and Jamilah the camel has been reviewed by the Guardian on 28 October 2026. The book is Elif Shafak's In One Brief Moment All Eternity, and its subject is the French novelist Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary.

The novel's opening scene, as the Guardian's review describes it, shows a devastated Flaubert killing "the only woman he has ever loved with heart, mind and soul" by writing the end of Madame Bovary. The phrase is the reviewer's account of the book's premise, and it sets up the novel's central idea: the author as a figure who controls the fate of the people he creates.

The book then turns to Emma Bovary, the heroine of Madame Bovary, who speaks in her own voice. According to the review, she is angry with her creator for denying her the chance to learn from her mistakes. Flaubert himself is not given a voice of his own in the novel.

Instead, Shafak has Emma call up the voices of 30 feminine figures that Flaubert encountered between his birth and his death. Some are human and some are not, which is why the cast includes Opium, Syphilis and the camel. These voices alternate with a third-person narrator, so the reader moves between the characters who shaped Flaubert and an outside storyteller who holds the account together.

Penguin Random House, the publisher, lists the book in its catalogue. Its description calls the novel a reinvention of an iconic male writer, told through the eyes of the women, real and fictional, who shaped him. Shafak's own website lists the book with a date of 15 October 2026.

The book has been on the radar of British critics for some months. The Guardian included it in its autumn fiction roundup in August 2026. The Financial Times had already published coverage in early October under the headline "In One Brief Moment All Eternity — Elif Shafak gives voice ..."

The Guardian describes the novel as stylistically inventive, and its structure is the most striking thing about it on paper. A life story usually moves in a straight line from birth to death. Here the story moves through a crowd of speakers, each with a different relationship to Flaubert, and the result is a portrait built from the people around him rather than from the man alone.

Readers who know Madame Bovary will recognise its heroine at the centre of the book. Readers who do not will still find a clear map: a novelist, the women he wrote, and the voices that pushed back.