The Bastard Of Istanbul

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The Bastard of Istanbul

Author : Elif Shafak
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1440635846
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (46 download)

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Book Synopsis The Bastard of Istanbul by : Elif Shafak

Download or read book The Bastard of Istanbul written by Elif Shafak and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-01-29 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “vivid and entertaining” (Chicago Tribune) tale about the tangled history of two families, from the author of The Island of Missing Trees (a Reese's Book Club Pick) "Zesty, imaginative . . . a Turkish version of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club." —USA Today As an Armenian American living in San Francisco, Armanoush feels like part of her identity is missing and that she must make a journey back to the past, to Turkey, in order to start living her life. Asya is a nineteen-year-old woman living in an extended all-female household in Istanbul who loves Jonny Cash and the French existentialists. The Bastard of Istanbul tells the story of their two families--and a secret connection linking them to a violent event in the history of their homeland. Filed with humor and understanding, this exuberant, dramatic novel is about memory and forgetting, about the need to examine the past and the desire to erase it, and about Turkey itself.

The Architect's Apprentice

Author : Elif Shafak
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 052542797X
Total Pages : 434 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (254 download)

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Book Synopsis The Architect's Apprentice by : Elif Shafak

Download or read book The Architect's Apprentice written by Elif Shafak and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "During the height of the Ottoman Empire twelve-year-old Johan arrived in Istanbul to become an animal tamer to the white elephant Chota, befriend the sultan's beautiful daughter, and become an apprentice to Sinan, the empire's chief architect. As they build masterpieces, dangerous undercurrents begin to emerge, with jealousy erupting among Sinan's four apprentices"--

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

Author : Elif Shafak
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 163557448X
Total Pages : 339 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (355 download)

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Book Synopsis 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by : Elif Shafak

Download or read book 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World written by Elif Shafak and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize Named a Best Book of the Year by Bookpage, NPR, Washington Post, and The Economist A moving novel on the power of friendship in our darkest times, from internationally renowned writer and speaker Elif Shafak. In the pulsating moments after she has been murdered and left in a dumpster outside Istanbul, Tequila Leila enters a state of heightened awareness. Her heart has stopped beating but her brain is still active-for 10 minutes 38 seconds. While the Turkish sun rises and her friends sleep soundly nearby, she remembers her life-and the lives of others, outcasts like her. Tequila Leila's memories bring us back to her childhood in the provinces, a highly oppressive milieu with religion and traditions, shaped by a polygamous family with two mothers and an increasingly authoritarian father. Escaping to Istanbul, Leila makes her way into the sordid industry of sex trafficking, finding a home in the city's historic Street of Brothels. This is a dark, violent world, but Leila is tough and open to beauty, light, and the essential bonds of friendship. In Tequila Leila's death, the secrets and wonders of modern Istanbul come to life, painted vividly by the captivating tales of how Leila came to know and be loved by her friends. As her epic journey to the afterlife comes to an end, it is her chosen family who brings her story to a buoyant and breathtaking conclusion.

The Gaze

Author : Elif Shafak
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141961384
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (419 download)

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Book Synopsis The Gaze by : Elif Shafak

Download or read book The Gaze written by Elif Shafak and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-10-25 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A beautiful and compelling novel, Elif Shafak's The Gaze considers the damage which can be inflicted by our simple desire to look at others "I didn't say anything. I didn't return his smiles. I looked at him in the wide mirror in front of where I was sitting. He grew uncomfortable and avoided my eyes. I hate those who think fat people are stupid.' An obese woman and her lover, a dwarf, are sick of being stared at wherever they go, and so decide to reverse roles. The man goes out wearing make up and the woman draws a moustache on her face. But while the woman wants to hide away from the world, the man meets the stares from passers-by head on, compiling his 'Dictionary of Gazes' to explore the boundaries between appearance and reality. Intertwined with the story of a bizarre freak-show organised in Istanbul in the 1880s, The Gaze considers the damage which can be inflicted by our simple desire to look at others. "Beautifully evoked" - The Times "Original and Compelling" - TLS "Plays with ideas of beauty and ugliness like they're Rubik's cubes" - Helen Oyeyemi "Entertaining and affecting" - Publishers' Weekly Elif Shafak is the acclaimed author of The Bastard of Istanbul and The Forty Rules of Love and is the most widely read female novelist in Turkey. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is a contributor for The Telegraph, Guardian and the New York Times and her TED talk on the politics of fiction has received 500 000 viewers since July 2010. She is married with two children and divides her time between Istanbul and London.

Honor

Author : Elif Shafak
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0143125044
Total Pages : 354 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (431 download)

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Book Synopsis Honor by : Elif Shafak

Download or read book Honor written by Elif Shafak and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A nuanced, powerful, and psychologically complex novel about the practice of honor killings, from the author of The Island of Missing Trees (a Reese's Book Club pick) Turkey’s leading female writer, Elif Shafak has won international acclaim for her lyrical blend of Eastern and Western storytelling styles. In this heartbreaking tale of love and misunderstanding, Shafak draws upon the dazzling insight, emotion, and drama that infused The Bastard of Istanbul to explore the controversial issue of honor killings as it tragically plays out in one family’s life. Twin sisters are born in the mid-1940s in a small Kurdish village on the border of Turkey and Syria. Jamila becomes a local midwife. Pembe marries Adem, and they immigrate to London in the 1970s. Bitter and frustrated with his new life, Adem moves out and Iskender, their eldest son, must step in as keeper of the family’s honor. But when Pembe begins to spend time with another man, Iskender will discover that you could love someone with all your heart and yet still hurt them.

The Forty Rules of Love

Author : Elif Shafak
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101189940
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis The Forty Rules of Love by : Elif Shafak

Download or read book The Forty Rules of Love written by Elif Shafak and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-02-18 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this lyrical, exuberant tale, acclaimed Turkish author Elif Shafak, author of The Island of Missing Trees (a Reese's Book Club Pick), incarnates Rumi's timeless message of love The Forty Rules of Love unfolds two tantalizing parallel narratives—one contemporary and the other set in the thirteenth century, when Rumi encountered his spiritual mentor, the whirling dervish known as Shams of Tabriz—that together explore the enduring power of Rumi's work. Ella Rubenstein is forty years old and unhappily married when she takes a job as a reader for a literary agent. Her first assignment is to read and report on Sweet Blasphemy, a novel written by a man named Aziz Zahara. Ella is mesmerized by his tale of Shams's search for Rumi and the dervish's role in transforming the successful but unhappy cleric into a committed mystic, passionate poet, and advocate of love. She is also taken with Shams's lessons, or rules, that offer insight into an ancient philosophy based on the unity of all people and religions, and the presence of love in each and every one of us. As she reads on, she realizes that Rumi's story mirrors her own and that Zahara—like Shams—has come to set her free.

The Flea Palace

Author : Elif Shafak
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141961376
Total Pages : 448 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (419 download)

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Book Synopsis The Flea Palace by : Elif Shafak

Download or read book The Flea Palace written by Elif Shafak and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-10-25 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By turns comic and tragic, Elif Shafak's The Flea Palace is an outstandingly original novel driven by an overriding sense of social justice. Bonbon Palace was once a stately apartment block in Istanbul. Now it is a sadly dilapidated home to ten wildly different individuals and their families. There's a womanizing, hard-drinking academic with a penchant for philosophy; a 'clean freak' and her lice-ridden daughter; a lapsed Jew in search of true love; and a charmingly naïve mistress whose shadowy past lurks in the building. When the garbage at Bonbon Palace is stolen, a mysterious sequence of events unfolds that result in a soul-searching quest for truth. "An enchanting combination of compassion and cruelty . . . Elif Shafak is the best author to come out of Turkey in the last decade" - Orhan Pamuk "Hyper-active and hilarious" - Independent Elif Shafak is the acclaimed author of The Bastard of Istanbul and The Forty Rules of Love and is the most widely read female novelist in Turkey. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is a contributor for The Telegraph, Guardian and the New York Times and her TED talk on the politics of fiction has received 500 000 viewers since July 2010. She is married with two children and divides her time between Istanbul and London.

How to Hug

Author : Maryann Macdonald
Publisher : Marshall Cavendish
ISBN 13 : 9780761458043
Total Pages : 36 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (58 download)

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Book Synopsis How to Hug by : Maryann Macdonald

Download or read book How to Hug written by Maryann Macdonald and published by Marshall Cavendish. This book was released on 2011 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The reader is invited to consider some things about when, who, and how to hug and also advised to be prepared to receive one in return.

Madame Tussaud

Author : Michelle Moran
Publisher : Hachette UK
ISBN 13 : 0857380737
Total Pages : 512 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (573 download)

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Book Synopsis Madame Tussaud by : Michelle Moran

Download or read book Madame Tussaud written by Michelle Moran and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2011-03-03 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paris, 1788. Marie is a young woman in love with her oldest friend and neighbour, Henri. But she is also a determined businesswoman, eager to see her family's waxwork museum keep them safe and solvent. Her gift for modelling faces in wax brings her to Versailles, where she must teach the king's sister her skill. But the coming revolution will place Marie, her family and all of Paris in grave danger. As the monarchy is overthrown and the guillotine becomes a fixture in French life, Marie is expected to show her patriotism by making death masks from the severed heads of every key figure killed as the Reign of Terror begins and France enters its darkest time. How will Marie survive the Revolution? Who will survive it with her? And just how will this girl come to be known as the woman behind one of the most famous museums in the world?

Istanbul

Author : Orhan Pamuk
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307386481
Total Pages : 402 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis Istanbul by : Orhan Pamuk

Download or read book Istanbul written by Orhan Pamuk and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2006-12-05 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Nobel Prize winner and acclaimed author of My Name is Red comes a portrait of Istanbul by its foremost writer, revealing the melancholy that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire. "Delightful, profound, marvelously origina.... Pamuk tells the story of the city through the eyes of memory." —The Washington Post Book World A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy—or hüzün—that all Istanbullus share. With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from his glamorous, unhappy parents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and painters—both Turkish and foreign—who would shape his consciousness of his city. Like Joyce’s Dublin and Borges’ Buenos Aires, Pamuk’s Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving.

How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division

Author : Elif Shafak
Publisher : Profile Books
ISBN 13 : 1782837280
Total Pages : 45 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (828 download)

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Book Synopsis How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division by : Elif Shafak

Download or read book How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division written by Elif Shafak and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2020-08-27 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Elegant ... calm and generous' Mary Beard, Guardian The must-read, pocket-sized Big Think book of 2020 One of the Guardian's 'Best Books to Inspire Compassion' One of Independent's Books of the Month A Cosmopolitan 'Revolutionary Read' Ours is the age of contagious anxiety. We feel overwhelmed by the events around us, by injustice, by suffering, by an endless feeling of crisis. So, how can we nurture the parts of ourselves that hope, trust and believe in something better? And how can we stay sane in this age of division? In this powerful, uplifting plea for conscious optimism, Booker Prize-nominated novelist and activist Elif Shafak draws on her own memories and delves into the power of stories to bring us together. In the process, she reveals how listening to each other can nurture democracy, empathy and our faith in a kinder and wiser future.

The Happiness of Blond People

Author : Elif Shafak
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0670921769
Total Pages : 28 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (79 download)

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Book Synopsis The Happiness of Blond People by : Elif Shafak

Download or read book The Happiness of Blond People written by Elif Shafak and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2011-12-01 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Happiness of Blond People by bestselling, multi-award-winning novelist Elif Shafak, author of The Bastard of Istanbul, is a powerful essay on immigration, multiculturalism and the experience of Muslims in Europe - available only as a Penguin Short. "You know, I never understand. How come their children are so quiet and well disciplined?" "Yeah," said the distressed father, his voice suddenly softer. "Blond children never cry, do they?" As Elif Shafak stands in line at the airport, she overhears a Turkish father expressing to a friend his bewilderment at the cultural differences he's experienced since immigrating to northern Europe. Is it true, she wonders, that the citizens of these countries are genuinely happier? Why do people leave their homes for other countries? And what lessons can we all learn, for the creation of truly harmonious societies, from the experiences of immigrants? In the light of the recent backlash against multiculturalism and the influx of millions of Muslims into Europe from the east, this powerful and personal essay uses the lived experience of immigrants to examine this most hotly debated subject. Elif Shafak is the acclaimed author of the award-winning The Gaze and The Bastard of Istanbul and is the foremost female author in Turkey. She is a contributor for the Telegraph, Guardian and The New York Times and her TED talk on the politics of fiction has received over 300,000 views since July 2010. She is the recipient of nine prestigious international honours and awards including the Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres, long-listing for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Maria Grazia Cutuli Award. She is married with two children and divides her time between Istanbul and the UK.

Honour

Author : Elif Shafak
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0670921173
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (79 download)

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Book Synopsis Honour by : Elif Shafak

Download or read book Honour written by Elif Shafak and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-04-05 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Orange Prize long-listed and award-winning author of The Forty Rules of Love and The Bastard of Istanbul Elif Shafak, Honour is a novel of love, betrayal and a clash of cultures. 'My mother died twice. I promised myself I would not let her story be forgotten . . .' Leaving her twin sister behind, Pembe leaves Turkey for love - following her husband Adem to London. There the Topraks hope to make new lives for themselves and their children. Yet, no matter how far they travel, the traditions and beliefs the Topraks left behind stay with them - carried in the blood. Their eldest is the boy Iskender, who remembers Turkey and feels betrayal deeper than most. His sister is Esma, who is loyal and true despite the pain and heartache. And, lastly, Yunus, who was born in London, and is shy and different. Trapped by the mistakes of the past, the Toprak children find their lives shattered and transformed by a brutal act of murder . . . A powerful novel set in Turkey and London in the 1970s, Honour explores pain and loss, loyalty and betrayal, the trials of the immigrant, the clash of tradition and modernity, as well as the love and heartbreak that too often tears families apart. 'A powerful book; thoughtful, provoking and compassionate' Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat 'Rich and wide as the Euphrates river along whose banks it begins and ends, Elif Shafak has woven with masterful care and compassion one immigrant family's heartbreaking story - a story nurtured in the terrible silences between men and women trying to grow within ancient ways, all the while growing past them. I loved this book' Sarah Blake, author of The Postmistress Elif Shafak is the acclaimed author of The Bastard of Istanbul and The Forty Rules of Love and is the most widely read female novelist in Turkey. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is a contributor for The Telegraph, Guardian and the New York Times and her TED talk on the politics of fiction has received 500 000 views since July 2010. She is married with two children and divides her time between Istanbul and London.

All of You Every Single One

Author : Beatrice Hitchman
Publisher : Abrams
ISBN 13 : 1647004144
Total Pages : 383 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (47 download)

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Book Synopsis All of You Every Single One by : Beatrice Hitchman

Download or read book All of You Every Single One written by Beatrice Hitchman and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From an acclaimed and powerful talent in historical fiction, a literary historical novel set in a Bohemian enclave of Vienna about love, freedom, and what constitutes a family—now in paperback! Set in Vienna from 1910 to 1946, All of You Every Single One is an atmospheric, original, and deeply moving novel about family, freedom, and how true love might survive impossible odds. Julia Lindqvist, a woman unhappily married to a famous Swedish playwright, leaves her husband to begin a passionate affair with a female tailor named Eve. The pair run away together and settle in the more liberal haven of Vienna, where they fall in love, navigate the challenges of their newfound independence, and find community in the city’s Jewish quarter. But Julia’s yearning for a child throws their fragile happiness into chaos and threatens to destroy her life and the lives of those closest to her. Ada Bauer’s wealthy industrialist family have sent her to Dr. Freud in the hope that he can cure her mutism—and do so without a scandal. But help will soon come for Ada from an unexpected place, changing many lives irrevocably. Through the lives of her queer characters, and against the changing backdrop of one of the greatest cities of the age, Hitchman asks what it’s like to live through oppression, how personal decisions become political, and how far one will go to protect the ones they love. Moving across Europe and through decades, Hitchman’s sophomore novel is an intensely poignant portrait of life and love on the fringes of history.

Istanbul Istanbul

Author : Burhan Sönmez
Publisher : OR Books
ISBN 13 : 1682190390
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (821 download)

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Book Synopsis Istanbul Istanbul by : Burhan Sönmez

Download or read book Istanbul Istanbul written by Burhan Sönmez and published by OR Books. This book was released on 2016-05-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Istanbul, Istanbul turns on the tension between the confines of a prison cell and the vastness of the imagination; between the vulnerable borders of the body and the unassailable depths of the mind. This is a harrowing, riveting novel, as unforgettable as it is inescapable.” —Dale Peck, author of Visions and Revisions “A wrenching love poem to Istanbul told between torture sessions by four prisoners in their cell beneath the city. An ode to pain in which Dostoevsky meets The Decameron.” —John Ralston Saul, author of On Equilibrium; former president, PEN International “Istanbul is a city of a million cells, and every cell is an Istanbul unto itself.” Below the ancient streets of Istanbul, four prisoners—Demirtay the student, the doctor, Kamo the barber, and Uncle Küheylan—sit, awaiting their turn at the hands of their wardens. When they are not subject to unimaginable violence, the condemned tell one another stories about the city, shaded with love and humor, to pass the time. Quiet laughter is the prisoners’ balm, delivered through parables and riddles. Gradually, the underground narrative turns into a narrative of the above-ground. Initially centered around people, the book comes to focus on the city itself. And we discover there is as much suffering and hope in the Istanbul above ground as there is in the cells underground. Despite its apparently bleak setting, this novel—translated into seventeen languages—is about creation, compassion, and the ultimate triumph of the imagination.

Three Daughters of Eve

Author : Elif Shafak
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1632869977
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (328 download)

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Book Synopsis Three Daughters of Eve by : Elif Shafak

Download or read book Three Daughters of Eve written by Elif Shafak and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Indie Next Pick The stunning, timely new novel from the acclaimed, internationally bestselling author of The Architect's Apprentice and The Bastard of Istanbul. Peri, a married, wealthy, beautiful Turkish woman, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground--an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor. A relic from a past--and a love--Peri had tried desperately to forget. Three Daughters of Eve is set over an evening in contemporary Istanbul, as Peri arrives at the party and navigates the tensions that simmer in this crossroads country between East and West, religious and secular, rich and poor. Over the course of the dinner, and amidst an opulence that is surely ill-begotten, terrorist attacks occur across the city. Competing in Peri's mind however are the memories invoked by her almost-lost polaroid, of the time years earlier when she was sent abroad for the first time, to attend Oxford University. As a young woman there, she had become friends with the charming, adventurous Shirin, a fully assimilated Iranian girl, and Mona, a devout Egyptian-American. Their arguments about Islam and feminism find focus in the charismatic but controversial Professor Azur, who teaches divinity, but in unorthodox ways. As the terrorist attacks come ever closer, Peri is moved to recall the scandal that tore them all apart. Elif Shafak is the number one bestselling novelist in her native Turkey, and her work is translated and celebrated around the world. In Three Daughters of Eve, she has given us a rich and moving story that humanizes and personalizes one of the most profound sea changes of the modern world.

The Island of Missing Trees

Author : Elif Shafak
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1635578604
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (355 download)

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Book Synopsis The Island of Missing Trees by : Elif Shafak

Download or read book The Island of Missing Trees written by Elif Shafak and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK Winner of the 2022 BookTube Silver Medal in Fiction * Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction "A wise novel of love and grief, roots and branches, displacement and home, faith and belief. Balm for our bruised times." -David Mitchell, author of Utopia Avenue A rich, magical new novel on belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature and renewal, from the Booker-shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World. Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns. He is a botanist looking for native species, but really, he's searching for lost love. Years later a Ficus carica grows in the back garden of a house in London where Ada Kazantzakis lives. This tree is her only connection to an island she has never visited--- her only connection to her family's troubled history and her complex identity as she seeks to untangle years of secrets to find her place in the world. A moving, beautifully written, and delicately constructed story of love, division, transcendence, history, and eco-consciousness, The Island of Missing Trees is Elif Shafak's best work yet.