Eid Mubarak to all celebrating! My current fiction read is The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak. If you have been following me for a while, you probably know that I love her novels and vivid writing. In this book, we are following the interwoven stories of two women and their families, one Turkish and the other Armenian American. A great mix of history, politics, philsosophy and a complex debate on identity, what else could I ask for? ⁣
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I love the fact that Elif Shafak created an implicit character out of the city of Istanbul, as we get to learn about its past and present. She sheds light on the Armenian genocide and the role of collective memory in shaping historical narratives. In 2006, a Turkish nationalist lawyer sued the author for allegdly “insulting Turkishness”, making this book a very important one in her career as a writer.⁣
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Have you read any of Elif Shafak’s novels?⁣