Best Seller
The Bastard of Istanbul
By Elif Shafak
By Elif Shafak
Paperback
$19.00
Published on Jan 29, 2008 | 368 Pages
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.
“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.
Author
Elif Shafak
ELIF SHAFAK is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist and storyteller who has published 21 books, including The Island of Missing Trees, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, The Forty Rules of Love, and There are Rivers in the Sky. Her work has been translated into 58 languages. She is the recipient of the British Academy President’s Medal and Halldór Laxness International Literature Prize for her contribution to “the renewal of the art of storytelling” and has been awarded Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
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