Longlisted for the 2008 Orange Fiction Prize, Elif
Shafak's ''The Bastard of Istanbul'' is a tale of an
extraordinary family curse and clashing cultural
identities in the mystical and mysterious city of
Istanbul. One rainy afternoon in Istanbul, a woman walks
into a doctor's surgery. 'I need to have an abortion',
she announces. She is nineteen years old and unmarried.
What happens that afternoon will change her life. Twenty
years later, Asya Kazanci lives with her extended family
in Istanbul. Due to a mysterious family curse, all the
Kaznci men die in their early forties, so it is a house
of women, among them Asya's beautiful, rebellious mother
Zeliha, who runs a tattoo parlour; Banu, who has newly
discovered herself as clairvoyant; and Feride, a
hypochondriac obsessed with impending disaster. And when
Asya's Armenian-American cousin Armanoush comes to stay,
long hidden family secrets connected with Turkey's
turbulent past begin to emerge. ''Wonderfully magical,
incredible, breathtaking...will have you gasping with
disbelief in the last few pages.'' (''Sunday Express'').
''A beautiful book, the finest I have read about
Turkey.'' (''Irish Times''). ''Heartbreaking...the
beauty of Islam pervades Shafak's book.'' (''Vogue'').
Elif Shafak has emerged as one of the most distinctive
voices in both English and Turkish contemporary
literature; her novels, ''The Flea Palace'', ''The Forty
Rules of Love'', ''The Gaze'' and ''Honour'', are
consistently at the top of bestseller lists across the
globe. Elif Shafak's examination of national identity,
''The Happiness of Blond People'' is available as part
of the ''Penguin Specials'' series - a digital only
series of shorts designed with commuters in mind. |
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