The Gaze (Turkish title Mahrem) is a novel written by Turkish writer Elif Şafak. It was first published in Turkey in 1999. The novel won the Turkish Authors' Association 2000 prize for "best novel". An English translation was published in 2006 by Marion Boyars Publishers.The novel consists of four separated, but coherent and interrelated parts that are split according to the place and the age where each independent story occurs. Each part may include different characters and narrator. The stories explore the philosophy of "gaze", in which characters may either gaze or become the subjects to be gazed and the fundamental differences between the perspectives of male and female. Source: Wikipedia (en)