The Bastard of Istanbul - Penguin Essentials
The Bastard of Istanbul - Penguin Essentials
paperback
Published:
6 June, 2019
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Description
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
Prizes
Long-listed for Orange Prize for Fiction.
More Details
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| ISBN13 | 9780241986448 |
| ISBN10 | 0241986443 |
| Number Of Pages | 368 |
| Item Weight | 201 g |
| Product Dimensions | 112 x 181 x 22 mm |
| Publisher / Reseller | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Format | paperback |
Media Reviews
A brave and passionate novel * Paul Theroux *
Tremendous exuberance . . . I do like a writer with a purpose * Margaret Forster *
An astonishingly rich and lively story … handled with an enchantingly light touch' Kirkus Reviews
Overflows with a kitchen sink's worth of zany characters … an entertaining and insightful ensemble novel that posits the universality of family, culture and coincidence -- (starred review) * Publishers Weekly *
Unquestionably an ambitious book, exuberant and teeming * Guardian *
Heartbreaking... the beauty of Islam pervades Shafak's book * Vogue *
GoodReads Reviews
Author's Bio
Elif Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish novelist, whose work has been translated into fifty-eight languages. The author of twenty books, thirteen of which are novels, she is a bestselling author in many countries around the world. Shafak’s novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. The Island of Missing Trees was a Sunday Times bestseller, and was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. There are Rivers in the Sky, which won an Edward Stanford Award for Fiction, is her latest novel.
Shafak holds a PhD in political science, and is a Fellow and a Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature. She has been awarded the medal of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and, in 2024, was awarded the British Academy President's Medal for ‘her excellent body of work which demonstrates an incredible intercultural range’.