The Island of Missing Trees : Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022 Elif Shafak
The Island of Missing Trees : Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022 (Paperback / Softback)Elif ShafakSigned and Exclusive Books
“The Island of Missing Trees” by Elif Shafak is a powerful and moving novel that explores the themes of love, identity, and trauma in a divided land. Longlisted for the Women’s Prize and shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award, this magical novel is set in 1974 on the island of Cyprus and follows the story of two teenagers, Kostas and Defne, who meet at a tavern where they can escape the sorrows of the world outside. Years later, sixteen-year-old Ada Kazantzakis seeks to uncover the secrets of her ancestry in North London, where she is connected to the land of her ancestors only through a fig tree growing in her back garden. With characteristic compassion for the overlooked and the under-loved, Elif Shafak brings us a wise novel of love and grief, roots and branches, displacement and home, and faith and belief. This book has received rave reviews, with Reese Witherspoon calling it “powerful and poignant,” and Margaret Atwood praising it as a “lovely heartbreaker of a novel.”
- Paperback / Softback
- 368 Pages / Published 7 Apr 2022
- In stock
£9.99
Use code: SHOPINDEPENDENT
Description
Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. The taverna It is 1974 on the island of Cyprus. Two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided land, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home.
The tavern is the only place that Kostas, who is Greek and Christian, and Defne, who is Turkish and Muslim, can meet, in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic, chilli peppers and wild herbs. This is where one can find the best food in town, the best music, the best wine. But there is something else to the place: it makes one forget, even if for just a few hours, the world outside and its immoderate sorrows.
In the centre of the tavern, growing through a cavity in the roof, is a fig tree. This tree will witness their hushed, happy meetings, their silent, surreptitious departures; and the tree will be there when the war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to rubble, when the teenagers vanish and break apart. Decades later in north London, sixteen-year-old Ada Kazantzakis has never visited the island where her parents were born.
Desperate for answers, she seeks to untangle years of secrets, separation and silence. The only connection she has to the land of her ancestors is a Ficus Carica growing in the back garden of their home. In The Island of Missing Trees, prizewinning author Elif Shafak brings us a rich, magical tale of belonging and identity, love and trauma, memory and amnesia, human-induced destruction of nature, and, finally, renewal.
Additional information
| Weight | 264 g |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 197 × 27 mm |
| ISBN-13 | 9780241988725 |
| Publisher | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Imprint | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Date of Publication | 7 Apr 2022 |
| By (author) | Elif Shafak |
| Pages | 368 |
| Format | Paperback / softback |
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