Books to gift during Eid

Reading lists

12 books that make great gifts for Eid

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10 books about Muslim experiences to read this Ramadan

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Must-read books by women, as chosen by our readers

Books by Elif Shafak on a colourful background.

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Where to start reading Elif Shafak’s books

The Flea Palace

Shortlisted for the 2005 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, Elif Shafak's The Flea Palace is a moving and highly original novel about a group of individuals who live in the same building and who together become embroiled in a mystery. 
 
By turns comic and tragic, The Flea Palace is an outstandingly original novel driven by an overriding sense of social justice. 
 
Bonbon Palace was once a stately apartment block in Istanbul. Now it is a sadly dilapidated home to ten wildly different individuals and their families. 
 
There's a womanizing, hard-drinking academic with a penchant for philosophy; a 'clean freak' and her lice-ridden daughter; a lapsed Jew in search of true love; and a charmingly naïve mistress whose shadowy past lurks in the building. When the rubbish at Bonbon Palace is stolen, a mysterious sequence of events unfolds that result in a soul-searching quest for truth. 
 
'Picaresque' Guardian 
 
'Hyperactive and hilarious' Independent 
 
*** ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, IS AVAILABLE NOW ***

Picaresque charm with a touch of magic realism

An enchanting combination of compassion and cruelty . . . Elif Shafak is the best author to come out of Turkey in the last decade

Ms Shafak is well set to challenge Mr Pamuk as Turkey's foremost contemporary novelist

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’.

Bonbon Palace was once a stately apartment block in Istanbul. Now it is a sadly dilapidated home to ten wildly different individuals and their families. 
 
There's a womanizing, hard-drinking academic with a penchant for philosophy; a 'clean freak' and her lice-ridden daughter; a lapsed Jew in search of true love; and a charmingly naïve mistress whose shadowy past lurks in the building. When the rubbish at Bonbon Palace is stolen, a mysterious sequence of events unfold that result in a soul-searching quest for truth. 
 
By turns comic and tragic, The Flea Palace is an outstandingly original novel driven by a powerful sense of social justice.

The Gaze

From award-winning writer Elif Shafak, the Orange Prize long-listed author of The Forty Rules of Love and The Architect's Apprentice, The Gaze is a humorous and carnivalesque exploration of what it means to look and be looked at... 
 
An obese woman and her lover, a dwarf, are sick of being stared at wherever they go and so decide to reverse roles. The man goes out wearing make-up and the woman draws a moustache on her face. 
 
This elegant, unforgettable novel explores our desire to look at others. 
 
'Beautifully evoked' The Times 
 
'Original and compelling' TLS 
 
*** ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, IS AVAILABLE NOW ***

Plays with ideas of beauty and ugliness like they're Rubik's cubes

Elif Shafak is the best author to come out of Turkey in the last decade

A gorgeous novel: worldly, intriguing, raucous yet elegant, teeming with love and cruelty - and brilliantly alive

Shafak's novel is a carefully crafted work of imagination... [it] will confirm Shafak's reputation as a writer of impressive range, who is not afraid to ask the big questions

Shafak paints a gorgeous picture of a city teeming with secrets, intrigue and romance. Lush

Vividly evoked, beautifully written... this edifying novel shows how hate and envy destroy, and how love might build the world anew

Shafak blends historical fiction, urban politics and youthful curiosity in an elaborate map of Turkey whose key is the book itself

An obese woman and her lover, a dwarf, are sick of being stared at wherever they go, and so decide to reverse roles. The man goes out wearing make-up and the woman draws a moustache on her face. But while the woman wants to hide away from the world, the man meets the stares from passers-by head on, compiling his 'Dictionary of Gazes' to explore the boundaries between appearance and reality. 
 
Intertwined with the story of a bizarre freak-show organized in Istanbul in the 1880s, The Gaze is a humorous and carnivalesque exploration of what it means to look and be looked at...

On Motherhood and Writing

Black Milk

Black Milk is the affecting and beautifully written memoir on motherhood and writing by Turkey's bestselling female writer Elif Shafak, author of Honour, The Gaze and The Bastard of Istanbul which was long-listed for the Orange prize. 
 
Postpartum depression affects millions of new mothers every year, and- like most of its victims- Elif Shafak never expected to be one of them. 
 
But after the birth of her first child in 2006, the internationally bestselling Turkish author remembers how "for the first time my adult life . . . words wouldn't speak to me". 
 
As her despair finally eased, Shafak sought to resuscitate her writing life by chronicling her own experiences. 
 
In her intimate memoir, she reveals how she struggled to overcome her depression and how literature provided the salvation she so desperately needed. 
 
'An intimate, affecting memoir . . . Her passion for literature is contagious, and her struggle with postpartum depression and writer's block reinforces how carefully all of us must tread. Beautifully rendered, Shafak's Black Milk is an epic poem to women everywhere' Colleen Mondor 
 
*** ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, IS AVAILABLE NOW ***

Black Milk is a book to dip into, to lend around, a book that you feel deserves to be read by all women attempting to draw together so many differing aspirations. . . It's a book to be readily passed on to. . .

An intimate, affecting memoir . . . Her passion for literature is contagious, and her struggle with postpartum depression and writer's block reinforces how carefully all of us must tread.

Postnatal depression affects millions of new mothers every year, and – like most of its victims – Elif Shafak never expected to be one of them. But after the birth of her first child in 2006, the internationally bestselling Turkish author remembers how, ‘for the first time in my adult life... words wouldn't speak to me’. 
 
As her despair finally eased, Shafak sought to resuscitate her writing life by chronicling her own experiences. In her beautiful and intimate memoir, she reveals how she struggled to overcome her depression and how literature provided the salvation she so desperately needed.

Honour

From Booker-shortlisted author Elif Shafak, Honour is a gripping tale of love, betrayal and clashing cultures. 
 
'My mother died twice. I promised myself I would not let her story be forgotten' 
 
Pembe and Adem Toprak leave Turkey for London. There they make new lives for their family. Yet the traditions and beliefs of their home come with them - carried in the blood of their children, Iskender and Esma. Trapped by past mistakes, the Toprak children find their lives torn apart and transformed by a brutal and chilling crime. 
 
Set in Turkey and London in the 1970s, Honour explores pain and loss, loyalty and betrayal, the clash of tradition and modernity, as well as the love and heartbreak that can tear any family apart. 
 
'One of the best writers in the world today' Hanif Kureishi 
 
'Vivid storytelling... that explores the darkest aspects of faith and love' Sunday Telegraph 
 
*** ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, IS AVAILABLE NOW ***

A powerful book; thoughtful, provoking and compassionate

Fascinating and gripping - a wonderful novel

Elif Shafak has woven with masterful care and compassion one immigrant family's heartbreaking story - a story nurtured in the terrible silences between men and women

Honour is a powerful tale of family connection and heartbreak, offering us insight and delight in equal measure . . . an exquisite and deep rendering of the fullness of life.

Aurelie Sheehan, author of The Anxiety of Everyday Objects

[Elif Shafak] joins writers such as Hanif Kureishi, Zadie Smith, Monica Ali, Aamer Hussein, Andrea Levy, Hanan al-Shakyh and Leila Aboulela, who offer us fictional glimpses of London's Others

An honour killing is at the centre of this stunning novel . . . Exotic, evocative and utterly gripping

Lushly and memorably magic-realist . . . This is an extraordinarily skilfully crafted and ambitious narrative

The book calls to mind The Color Purple in the fierceness of its engagement with male violence and its determination to see its characters to a better place. But Shafak is closer to Isabel Allende in spirit, confidence and charm. Her portrayal of Muslim cultures, both traditional and globalising, is as hopeful as it is politically sophisticated. This alone should gain her the world audience she has long deserved

Moving, subtle and ultimately hopeful, Honour is further proof that Shafak is the most exciting Turkish novelist to reach western readers in years

Vivid storytelling...  that explores the darkest aspects of faith and love

Shafak treats an important, absorbing subject in a fast-paced, internationally familiar style that will make it accessible to a wide readership

'My mother died twice. I promised myself I would not let her story be forgotten' 
 
And so begins the story of Esma, a young Kurdish woman in London trying to come to terms with the terrible murder her brother has committed. Esma tells the story of her family stretching back three generations; back to her grandmother and the births of her mother and Aunt in a village on the edge of the Euphrates. 
 
Named Pembe and Jamila (meaning Pink and Beautiful rather than the names their mother wanted to call them, Destiny and Enough), the twin girls have very different futures ahead of them, all of which will end in tragedy on a street in East London in 1978. 
 
Honour is a powerful, brilliant and moving account of pain and loss, loyalty and betrayal, the clash of tradition and modernity, as well as the love and heartbreak that can tear any family apart.

Three Daughters of Eve

From Booker-shortlisted author Elif Shafak, comes a powerful tale of faith, love and friendship set across Istanbul and Oxford 
 
Shirin, Peri and Mona, they were the most unlikely of friends. They were the Sinner, the Believer and the Confused. 
 
On a spring evening in Istanbul, Peri is on her way to a dinner party - a night of luxury a far cry from her upbringing. 
 
But when her handbag is stolen her world shifts violently. She starts to doubt how she got here: a traumatic Istanbul childhood, student years in Oxford, the rebellious professor who led her and best friends Shirin and Mona to question everything - Islam, love, life, even God - and the scandal that tore them all apart. 
 
Over one desperate night she tries to make sense of a past she has tried to forget - but can we ever escape who we once were? 
 
*** ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, IS AVAILABLE NOW ***

A terrific book. Poetic, poignant, trenchant.

An intelligent, fierce and beguiling read

A thoughtful, charming book that offers a connection to other worlds, perspectives and possibilities

An intense, discursive and absorbing novel

One of the most important writers at work today, Elif Shafak eloquently explores Turkey's tumultuous present and past. Her magnificent latest moves between Istanbul and Oxford in a fascinating exploration of faith and friendship, rich and poor, and the devastating clash of tradition and modernity

A brilliant and moving novel. Elif Shafak writes about religion without superficiality or special pleading, retaining a sense of its impossible possibility or its possible impossibility. Three Daughters of Eve is a remarkable accomplishment

Elif Shafak's writing leaps off the page. In Three Daughters of Eve she takes us spine-tinglingly right under the skin of three women, exposing the strains of friendship through love and loss. An utterly engrossing read.

Frances Osborne, bestselling author of The Bolter

Shafak's topical 10th novel is both an interrogation and a defence of Muslim identity

Luscious, heartbreaking, completely absorbing. It is a full-blown saga of emotion and character, straddling countries, cultures and languages, exploring its women's ambitions and desires; and at the same time a steady-eyed examination of the nameless rules - of femininity, duty, belief and behaviour - that keep us in line and under control. This is an absolutely consuming novel about women who know what they want, and a warning about the price we pay, written with the fluency and depth of an author at the very top of her game.

Exuberant, epic and comic, fantastical and realistic . . . like all good stories it conveys deeper meanings about human experience

Financial Times on 'The Architect's Apprentice'

A powerful book; thoughtful, provoking and compassionate

Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat, on 'Honour'

Vivid storytelling... that explores the darkest aspects of faith and love

Moving, subtle and ultimately hopeful, Honour is further proof that Shafak is the most exciting Turkish novelist to reach western readers in years

Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground - an old Polaroid of three young women and their university professor. A relic from a past - and a love - Peri had tried desperately to forget. 
 
The photograph takes Peri back to Oxford, where she was sent at eighteen, abroad for the first time: to her dazzling, rebellious professor and his life-changing course on God, to her home with her two best friends, Shirin and Mona, and their arguments about Islam and femininity and, finally, to the scandal that tore them all apart. Over one desperate night she tries to make sense of a past she has tried to forget – but can we ever escape who we once were?

The Bastard of Istanbul

A gripping and beautiful novel from Elif Shafak, Booker-shortlisted author of The Island of Missing Trees and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World 
 
One rainy afternoon in Istanbul a woman walks into a doctor's surgery. 'I want an abortion,' she announces. She is nineteen years old, and unmarried. What happens that afternoon will change her life, and the lives of everyone around her. 
 
 Twenty years later, Asya Kazanci lives with her extended family in Istanbul. A mysterious curse causes all the men to die by the age of 41, so it is a house of women, among them her beautiful, rebellious mother, Zeliha, clairvoyant Auntie Banu and bar-brawl widow, Auntie Cevriye. But 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'S NEW NOVEL, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, IS AVAILABLE NOW ***

Unquestionably an ambitious book, exuberant and teeming . . . a novel crammed with characters and themes, not unlike Istanbul itself

Wonderfully magical, incredible, breathtaking . . . will have you gasping with disbelief in the last few pages

Heartbreaking . . . the beauty of Islam pervades Shafak's book

A writer whose artistry matches her ambition . . . she has taken on a subject of deep moral consequence

Tremendous exuberance . . . I do like a writer with a purpose

An astonishingly rich and lively story ... handled with an enchantingly light touch

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

A tender and spirited novel... Steeped in the sights, colours and smells of Turkey's capital, it grapples with the country's dark legacies

With compassion and a deftly humorous touch, Shafak fashions a woman's world that is at once micro and macro, using everyday material - recipes, lullabies, superstitions - to illuminate a broader reality

One rainy afternoon in Istanbul a woman walks into a doctor’s surgery. ‘I want an abortion,’ she announces. She is nineteen years old and unmarried. What happens that day will change her life, and the lives of everyone around her. 
 
Twenty years later, Asya Kazanci lives with her extended family in Istanbul. A mysterious curse causes all the men to die by the age of forty-one, so it is a house of women, among them her beautiful, rebellious mother, Zeliha, clairvoyant Auntie Banu and bar-brawl widow, Auntie Cevriye. But when Asya’s Armenian-American cousin Armanoush comes to stay, long-hidden family secrets connected with Turkey’s turbulent past begin to emerge.

The Forty Rules of Love

The international bestseller from the Booker-shortlisted author of The Island of Missing Trees and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World 
 
* One of the BBC's '100 Novels that Shaped the World'* 
 
"Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough..." 
 
Ella Rubinstein has a husband, three teenage children, and a pleasant home. Everything that should make her confident and fulfilled. Yet there is an emptiness at the heart of Ella's life - an emptiness once filled by love. 
 
 So when Ella reads a manuscript about the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi and his mentor Shams of Tabriz, and his forty rules of life and love, she is ready to look at her life anew. Compelled to embrace change, she embarks on a journey to meet the mysterious author. It is a quest infused with Sufi mysticism and verse, taking Ella and us into a faraway world where faith and doubt are heartbreakingly explored. The Forty Rules of Love is a mesmerising tale of discovery, language, truth and, of course, love itself. 
'Enlightening, enthralling. An affecting paean to faith and love' Metro 
 
'Colourfully woven and beguilingly intelligent' Daily Telegraph 
 
'The past and present fit together beautifully in a passionate defence of passion itself' The Times 
 
*** ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, IS AVAILABLE NOW ***

With its timely, thought-provoking message . . . The Forty Rules of Love deserves to be a global publishing phenomenon

Enlightening, enthralling. An affecting paean to faith and love

Colourfully woven and beguilingly intelligent

The past and present fit together beautifully in a passionate defence of passion itself

Ella Rubinstein has a husband, three teenage children and a pleasant home. Everything that should make her confident and fulfilled. Yet there is an emptiness at the heart of her life – an emptiness once filled by love. 
 
So when Ella reads a manuscript about the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi and his mentor Shams of Tabriz, and his forty rules of life and love, she is ready to look at her life anew. Compelled to embrace change, she embarks on a journey to meet the mysterious author. It is a quest infused with Sufi mysticism and verse, taking Ella and us into a faraway world where faith and doubt are heartbreakingly explored. The Forty Rules of Love is a mesmerizing tale of discovery, language, truth and, of course, love itself.

The Architect's Apprentice

A dazzling and intricate tale from the Booker-shortlisted author of The Island of Missing Trees, and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World. 
 
'There were six of us: the master, the apprentices and the white elephant. We built everything together...' 
 
Sixteenth-century Istanbul: a stowaway arrives in the city bearing an extraordinary gift for the Sultan. The boy is utterly alone in a foreign land, with no worldly possessions to his name except Chota, a rare white elephant destined for the palace menagerie. 
 
 So begins an epic adventure that will see young Jahan rise from lowly origins to the highest ranks of the Sultan's court. Along the way he will meet deceitful courtiers and false friends, gypsies, animal tamers, and the beautiful, mischievous Princess Mihrimah. He will journey on Chota's back to the furthest corners of the Sultan's kingdom and back again. And one day he will catch the eye of the royal architect, Sinan, a chance encounter destined to change Jahan's fortunes forever. 
 
 The Architect's Apprentice is a magical, sweeping tale of one boy and his elephant caught up in a world of wonder and danger. 
'A gorgeous picture of a city teeming with secrets, intrigue and romance' The Times 
 
'Exuberant, epic and comic, fantastical and realistic . . . like all good stories it conveys deeper meanings about human experience' Financial Times 
 
'Fascinating. A vigorous evocation of the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power' Sunday Times 
 
'Intricate, multi-layered, resplendent, vividly evoked, beautifully written' Observer 
 
*** ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, IS AVAILABLE NOW ***

'A gorgeous picture of a city teeming with secrets, intrigue and romance'

'Shafak's most ambitious novel yet her best - generous and imaginative'

'Exuberant, epic and comic, fantastical and realistic . . . like all good stories it conveys deeper meanings about human experience'

'Fascinating. A vigorous evocation of the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power'

'Intricate, multi-layered, resplendent, vividly evoked, beautifully written'

Sixteenth-century Istanbul: a stowaway arrives in the city bearing an extraordinary gift for the Sultan. The boy is utterly alone in a foreign land, with no possessions, except Chota, a rare white elephant destined for the palace menagerie. 
 
So begins an epic adventure that will see young Jahan rise from lowly origins to the highest ranks of the Sultan’s court. Along the way, he will meet deceitful courtiers and false friends, gypsies, animal tamers and the beautiful, mischievous Princess Mihrimah. He will journey with Chota to the furthest corners of the kingdom and back again. And one day, he will catch the eye of the royal architect, Sinan, a chance encounter destined to change Jahan’s fortunes for ever. 
 
The Architect’s Apprentice is a magical, sweeping tale of one boy and his elephant, caught up in a world of wonder and danger.

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019 
 
'Expect vibrant, vivid and eye-opening descriptions of Middle Eastern life propelled by a tender storyline, all in Shafak's haunting, beautiful and considered prose' Vanity Fair 
 
'Incredibly sensuous and poetic and evocative' Pandora Sykes 
 
'In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore. Her brain cells, having run out of blood, were now completely deprived of oxygen. But they did not shut down. Not right away...' 
 
 For Leila, each minute after her death brings a sensuous memory: the taste of spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the long-awaited birth of a son; the sight of bubbling vats of lemon and sugar which women use to wax their legs while men attend mosque; the scent of cardamom coffee that she shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each memory, too, recalls the friends Leila made at each key moment in her life – friends who are now desperately trying to find her. . . 
 
'Simply magnificent, a truly captivating work of immense power and beauty, on the essence of life and its end' Philippe Sands 
 
'Elif Shafak brings into the written realm what so many others want to leave outside. Spend more than ten minutes and 38 seconds in this world of the estranged. Shafak makes a new home for us in words' Colum McCann 
 
'A rich, sensual novel... This is a novel that gives voice to the invisible, the untouchable, the abused and the damaged, weaving their painful songs into a thing of beauty.' Financial Times 
 
'One of the best writers in the world today' Hanif Kureishi 
 
*** ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, IS AVAILABLE NOW ***

A truly captivating work of immense power and beauty

Haunting, moving, beautifully written

A rich, sensual novel... This is a novel that gives voice to the invisible, the untouchable, the abused and the damaged, weaving their painful songs into a thing of beauty.

One of the best writers in the world today

Shafak is the most exciting Turkish novelist to reach western readers in years

A vivid carnival of life and death, cruelty and kindness, love, politics and deep humanity. This is only possible in the hands of a consummate storyteller. Elif Shafak's lyrical command of language and narrative is breathtaking. Brilliant!

Elif Shafak brings into the written realm what so many others want to leave outside. Spend more than ten minutes and 38 seconds in this world of the estranged. Shafak makes a new home for us in words

Elif Shafak's extraordinary Ten Minutes, 38 Seconds in this Strange World is a work of brutal beauty and consummate tenderness, a wild shout of life from out of the lower depths of destitution and prostitution, indeed from beyond the grave itself. Every page throbs with unruly vitality, the sense- saturating colours scents and sounds of raw Istanbul, all registered with poetic sharpness. It's a book which for all its ordeals is a profoundly moving, at times lyrical, celebration of humanity's obstinate fight for life against the steepest of odds

A heartbreaking meditation on the ways in which social forces can destroy a life. Elif Shafak can be unsparing, lyrical, political, intimate... Several novels live in this one, and all of them are moving, generous and elegantly written

Deeply moving, imaginative. Shafak writes with immense compassion

Incredibly sensuous and poetic and evocative

Brilliant. Shafak excels at capturing Istanbul's atmosphere, its labyrinthine alleys, the cultural collision of East and West

Beguiling. There is so much beauty in this book

Life-affirming. A vibrant and rich world that conjures up a life that's filled with love and empathy

Touching, reminiscent of The Lovely Bones. Expect vibrant, vivid and eye-opening descriptions of Middle Eastern life propelled by a tender storyline, all in Shafak's haunting, beautiful and considered prose

Richly uplifting... truly beautiful writing. Thoroughly recommended

A terrific book. Poetic, poignant, trenchant

For Leila, each minute after her death brings a vivid memory: the taste of spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the long-awaited birth of a son; the sight of bubbling vats of lemon and sugar which women use to wax their legs while men attend mosque; the scent of cardamom coffee that she shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each memory, too, recalls the friends Leila made at each key moment in her life – friends who are now desperately trying to find her . . .

How great artists and their work were shaped by the First World War

Minds at War

The complete BBC Radio 3 series exploring how great creative minds responded to the First World War in individual works of art and scholarship 
 
World War I saw an unprecedented loss of life in Western Europe, and destruction on a scale no one alive had ever seen. All those who experienced it were irrevocably changed, including many writers and artists upon whose oeuvre it left an indelible mark. 
 
This captivating series examines the impact of the war on artists and thinkers through the prism of their great works. In each episode, a leading figure from the worlds of science, culture and the arts reflects on a single iconic piece, and discusses how the events of 1914-18 shaped its creation. 
 
The 29 artworks in this collection comprise paintings, plays, books, films, sculptures and cartoons. Ian Christie appraises Eisenstein's seminal Soviet drama Battleship Potemkin; Dame Gillian Beer considers Virginia Woolf's masterpiece Mrs Dalloway; Fintan O'Toole decodes James Joyce's epic modernist novel, Ulysses; and Dr Heather Jones looks at the controversy and war connections around Marcel Duchamp's notorious 'Fountain'. 
 
Key texts such as Sigmund Freud's twin essays Thoughts for the Time on War and Death; Rabindranath Tagore's Nobel Lectures; and Siegfried Sassoon's celebrated 1917 protest letter to The Times are analysed by Dr Michael Shapira, Santanu Das and Joanna Bourke; and a panoply of other pieces, among them Kathe Kollwitz's 'The Grieving Parents', Sean O'Casey's The Silver Tassie and Rudyard Kipling's Epitaphs are discussed by experts including Ruth Padel, Elizabeth Kuti and Janet Montefiore. 
 
Powerful, moving, thought-provoking and often shocking, these landmark works are all, in their very different ways, a response to the horrors of World War I and its aftermath - one that vividly demonstrates the transformative effects the conflict had on the collective artistic psyche. 
 
Production credits 
Presented by Allan Little, Sara LeFanu, Martin Rowson, Prof David Edgerton, Michal Shapira, Dr Heather Jones, Ian Christie, Lyse Doucet, Santanu Das, Ruth Padel, Arthur Smith, Prof Gillian Beer, Richard Cork, Sasha Dugdale, Fintan O'Toole, Gerald Dawe, John D McHugh, Elizabeth Kuti, Tarek Osman, Joanna Bourke, Elif Shafak, Dr Imaobong Umoren, Janet Montefiore, Jane Potter and Alex Walton 
Produced by Beaty Rubens, Benedict Warren, Emma Kingsley, Simon Elmes and Sarah Bowen 
 
Episode list: 
1. Paths of Glory 
2. Non-Combatants and Others 
3. Der Krieg 
4. The Memorandum on the Neglect of Science 
5. Thoughts for the Times on War and Death 
6. Le Feu 
7. Battleship Potemkin 
8. Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort 
9. The Broken Wing 
10. The Grieving Parents 
11. Tagore's Nobel Lectures 
12. Tzara's Dada Manifesto 
13. Woolf's Mrs Dalloway 
14. Parade 
15. Akhmatova's July 1914 
16. James Joyce's Ulysses 
17. Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September 
18. Francis Ledwidge's poem O'Connell Street 
19. Father Browne's Photograph of a Wounded Soldier 
20. Sean O'Casey's The Silver Tassie 
21. Marcel Duchamp 
22. Gertrude Bell 
23. Siegfried Sassoon's Letter to The Times 
24. Mata Hari's Final Performance 
25. Isaac Rosenberg's Dead Man's Dump 
26. WEB Dubois' Returning Soldiers 
27. Rudyard Kipling's Epitaphs 
28. Mary Borden's The Forbidden Zone 
29. Isobel Rae 
 
© 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P) 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

David Edgerton is Hans Rausing Professor of the History of Science and Technology and Professor of Modern British History at King's College London. He is the author of a sequence of ground-breaking books in 20th century British history: Science, Technology and the British Industrial 'Decline', 1870-1970; Warfare State: Britain, 1920-1970; as well as Britain's War Machine, and England and the Aeroplane, both published by Penguin. He is also the author of the iconoclastic and brilliant The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.

The complete BBC Radio 3 series exploring how great creative minds responded to the First World War in individual works of art and scholarship 
 
World War I saw an unprecedented loss of life in Western Europe, and destruction on a scale no one alive had ever seen. All those who experienced it were irrevocably changed, including many writers and artists upon whose oeuvre it left an indelible mark. 
 
This captivating series examines the impact of the war on artists and thinkers through the prism of their great works. In each episode, a leading figure from the worlds of science, culture and the arts reflects on a single iconic piece, and discusses how the events of 1914-18 shaped its creation. 
 
The 29 artworks in this collection comprise paintings, plays, books, films, sculptures and cartoons. Ian Christie appraises Eisenstein's seminal Soviet drama Battleship Potemkin; Dame Gillian Beer considers Virginia Woolf's masterpiece Mrs Dalloway; Fintan O'Toole decodes James Joyce's epic modernist novel, Ulysses; and Dr Heather Jones looks at the controversy and war connections around Marcel Duchamp's notorious 'Fountain'. 
 
Key texts such as Sigmund Freud's twin essays Thoughts for the Time on War and Death; Rabindranath Tagore's Nobel Lectures; and Siegfried Sassoon's celebrated 1917 protest letter to The Times are analysed by Dr Michael Shapira, Santanu Das and Joanna Bourke; and a panoply of other pieces, among them Kathe Kollwitz's 'The Grieving Parents', Sean O'Casey's The Silver Tassie and Rudyard Kipling's Epitaphs are discussed by experts including Ruth Padel, Elizabeth Kuti and Janet Montefiore. 
 
Powerful, moving, thought-provoking and often shocking, these landmark works are all, in their very different ways, a response to the horrors of World War I and its aftermath - one that vividly demonstrates the transformative effects the conflict had on the collective artistic psyche. 
 
Production credits 
Presented by Allan Little, Sara LeFanu, Martin Rowson, Prof David Edgerton, Michal Shapira, Dr Heather Jones, Ian Christie, Lyse Doucet, Santanu Das, Ruth Padel, Arthur Smith, Prof Gillian Beer, Richard Cork, Sasha Dugdale, Fintan O'Toole, Gerald Dawe, John D McHugh, Elizabeth Kuti, Tarek Osman, Joanna Bourke, Elif Shafak, Dr Imaobong Umoren, Janet Montefiore, Jane Potter and Alex Walton 
Produced by Beaty Rubens, Benedict Warren, Emma Kingsley, Simon Elmes and Sarah Bowen 
 
Episode list: 
1. Paths of Glory 
2. Non-Combatants and Others 
3. Der Krieg 
4. The Memorandum on the Neglect of Science 
5. Thoughts for the Times on War and Death 
6. Le Feu 
7. Battleship Potemkin 
8. Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort 
9. The Broken Wing 
10. The Grieving Parents 
11. Tagore's Nobel Lectures 
12. Tzara's Dada Manifesto 
13. Woolf's Mrs Dalloway 
14. Parade 
15. Akhmatova's July 1914 
16. James Joyce's Ulysses 
17. Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September 
18. Francis Ledwidge's poem O'Connell Street 
19. Father Browne's Photograph of a Wounded Soldier 
20. Sean O'Casey's The Silver Tassie 
21. Marcel Duchamp 
22. Gertrude Bell 
23. Siegfried Sassoon's Letter to The Times 
24. Mata Hari's Final Performance 
25. Isaac Rosenberg's Dead Man's Dump 
26. WEB Dubois' Returning Soldiers 
27. Rudyard Kipling's Epitaphs 
28. Mary Borden's The Forbidden Zone 
29. Isobel Rae 
 
© 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P) 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

The Island of Missing Trees

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022 
THE TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER & REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK 
 
***** 
 
You don't fall in love in Cyprus in the summer of 1974. Not here, not now. 
 
In 1974, two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided Cyprus, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home. The tavern is the only place that Kostas, who is Greek, and Defne who is Turkish, can meet in secret, hidden beneath the leaves of a fig tree growing through the roof of the tavern. This tree will witness their hushed happy meetings, and will be there when the war breaks out and the teenagers vanish. 
 
Decades later in north London, sixteen-year-old Ada has never visited the island where her parents were born. She seeks to untangle years of her family's silence, but the only connection she has to the land of her ancestors Is a fig tree growing tin the garden of their home . . . 
 
***** 
 
'This book moved me to tears . . . in the best way. Powerful and poignant' Reese Witherspoon 
 
'A brilliant novel -- one that rings with Shafak's characteristic compassion' Robert Macfarlane 
 
'This is an enchanting, compassionate and wise novel and storytelling at its most sublime' Polly Samson

An outstanding work of breathtaking beauty

A writer of important, beautiful, painful, truthful novels

Lovely heartbreaker of a novel centered on dark secrets of civil wars &amp; evils of extremism: Cyprus, star-crossed lovers, killed beloveds, damaged kids

Elif Shafak is a unique and powerful voice in world literature

One of the best writers in the world today

A wise novel of love and grief, roots and branches, displacement and home, faith and belief. The Island of Missing Trees is balm for our bruised times

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.

A Personal Meditation on the Dangers of Identity

The Happiness of Blond People

The Happiness of Blond People by bestselling, multi-award-winning novelist Elif Shafak, author of The Bastard of Istanbul, is a powerful essay on immigration, multiculturalism and the experience of Muslims in Europe - available only as a Penguin Short. 
 
"You know, I never understand. How come their children are so quiet and well disciplined?" 
"Yeah," said the distressed father, his voice suddenly softer. "Blond children never cry, do they?" 
 
As Elif Shafak stands in line at the airport, she overhears a Turkish father expressing to a friend his bewilderment at the cultural differences he's experienced since immigrating to northern Europe. Is it true, she wonders, that the citizens of these countries are genuinely happier? Why do people leave their homes for other countries? And what lessons can we all learn, for the creation of truly harmonious societies, from the experiences of immigrants? 
 
In the light of the recent backlash against multiculturalism and the influx of millions of Muslims into Europe from the east, this powerful and personal essay uses the lived experience of immigrants to examine this most hotly debated subject. 
 
Elif Shafak is the acclaimed author of the award-winning The Gaze and The Bastard of Istanbul and is the foremost female author in Turkey. She is a contributor for the Telegraph, Guardian and The New York Times and her TED talk on the politics of fiction has received over 300,000 views since July 2010. She is the recipient of nine prestigious international honours and awards including the Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres, long-listing for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Maria Grazia Cutuli Award. She is married with two children and divides her time between Istanbul and the UK.

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’.

Penguin Specials are designed to fill a gap. Written to be read over a long commute or a short journey, they are original and exclusively in digital form. This is Elif Shafak's examination of national identity. 
 
"You know, I never understand. How come their children are so quiet and well disciplined?" 
"Yeah," said the distressed father, his voice suddenly softer. "Blond children never cry, do they?" 
 
As Elif Shafak stands in line at the airport, she overhears a Turkish father expressing to a friend his bewilderment at the cultural differences he's experienced since immigrating to northern Europe. Is it true, she wonders, that the citizens of these countries are genuinely happier? Why do people leave their homes for other countries? And what lessons can we all learn, for the creation of truly harmonious societies, from the experiences of immigrants? 
 
In the light of the recent backlash against multiculturalism and the influx of millions of Muslims into Europe from the east, this powerful and personal essay uses the lived experience of immigrants to examine this most hotly debated subject.

Five Frightening Tales from Five Essential Writers

A Ghostly Little Book

Elif Shafak

It will make you think, cry, rage – and hope. It is Elif Shafak at her best

Gloriously expansive and intellectually rich... a magnificent achievement

Richly evocative. A fascinating stream of storytelling.

Engrossing. I turned the pages hungrily, carried by Shafak’s energetic prose and confident that it was heading towards a coherent and rewarding ending. As ever, Shafak did not disappoint.

An absorbing novel. Shafak is a novelist whose interest in mapping the intricately related world and its history goes beyond literary device.

A brilliant, unforgettable novel, which raises big ideas of 'who owns the past' with nuance and complexity. Elif Shafak ties together diverse time periods and places in a way that seems both natural and wonderfully unexpected.

Make place for Elif Shafak on your bookshelf. Make place for her in your heart too. You won't regret it

It will surprise no one that this is a brutal, elegant and incredible book. Amazing what Elif Shafak has done here - again! Magic.

An odyssey, an epic, a lament, and a tale of redemption, There are Rivers in the Sky is a clarion call to honor the elemental forces that shape our memories, our histories, and our world. In short, a masterpiece.

A book that is astonishing, ingenious and beautiful. A modern classic. Elif Shafak is one of the great writers of our time

A deep and satisfying sweep of a story combining intellectual pleasures with a transformative empathy. Particular, universal, with head and with heart in perfect balance, this is surely a landmark novel.

A great, sweeping, enthralling novel - Elif Shafak's narrative vision is as remarkable and astonishing as ever. Wonderful.

Literature on a grand scale, mythic and timeless

There are Rivers in the Sky is an enchanting epic, told through the vantage of single raindrop, where the sacred mysteries of water, science, and poetry collide. In this gorgeous and riverine novel, water is poetry, water is memory. This is a love song to the keepers of our stories and histories, a resounding tribute to the wise women who know the poetry of our rivers. Elif Shafak is one of them—a master storyteller whose prose thrums with such gorgeous details and propulsive spirit, flowing with a keen-eyed wisdom that only she could conjure. I came away feeling restored

Elif Shafak approaches the world with grace, lyricism, and courage. Confronting societies riven by conflicts over gender, religion, sexuality, nationalism, memory, ideology, and more, Shafak wields the novel’s artistic power to cut through complacency and orthodoxy with ruthlessness and beauty. Her words and works—compelling and provocative—leave us in a space of light, a clearing from where we can see this world anew.

If you were going on aesthetics lone, the latest novel from Shafak (above) would make a gorgeous gift purely for its mesmerising blue and gold cover. But its contents are even more dazzling. Sweeping between multiple settings and timelines, from Victorian London to modern-day Turkey, it is a story about the lives of three very different characters who are interconnected by a lost poem and a single drop of water

From its bravura opening through to its final pages, There are Rivers in the Sky is a dazzling achievement. Shafak’s imagination is a wonder: bold, capacious, beautiful and wise.

Elif Shafak's beautiful and moving new novel bears the reader along on its marvellous currents. Here, rivers twine with other rivers and lives with other lives across centuries and cultures, as the fate of a single drop of water weaves an intricate tapestry of love and loss

...dazzling. Sweeping between multiple settings and timelines, from Victorian London to modern-day Turkey, it's a story about the lives of three very different characters who are interconnected by a lost poem and a single drop of water

iPaper - The 30 best books for Christmas 2024

A meditation on family history, memory and sexual awakening

Anger bubbles over into passion - and then a brilliantly executed twist elevates this love story into something much darker. I've been raving about this all year

Intricate, exhilarating storytelling that is a poetic reminder of how connected we are to one another and to the past.

A great epic novel, as swift as a torrent, as deep as an ocean. Elif Shafak at the height of her powers, sweeping us off our feet.

Wide-ranging, eloquent and lavishly detailed, There are Rivers in the Sky expertly draws its various narratives to a powerful climax

There's an elegance to Shafak's storytelling that always draws me, but it is her grit and substance that held me to the last page. Wonderful.

A single raindrop links three narrative threads: Victorian London, where Arthur is obsessed with a lost poem after a visit to the British Museum; the River Tigris in 2014 as Narin flees war with her grandmother; and London in 2018 through the eyes of hydrologist Zaleekhah

One lost poem, two great rivers, three vivid characters from different cultures and times are all united in the ever-changing fate of a single raindrop as it journeys from Victorian London to modern day Turkey in this evocative, immersive epic

If you are a big fan of books that tie together narratives across time, Elif Shafak has written a great one

...in my own stocking I'd love to find Elif Shafak's There Are Rivers in the Sky... it looks like a glorious feast of a novel, from one of the world's most exhilarating storytellers

My novel of the year is Elif Shafak's There Are Rivers in the Sky, a surprising tale of how water connects us all, with a clever cameo role for the British Museum in the 19th century

Daily Express - Closing a chapter on 2024

...Weaving together these three stories with effortless grace, Elif Shafak reminds us she is one of our most evocative storytellers working today. There's an elegance and lyricism to her writing that makes every sentence feel like a work of art. The book is also as intellectually stimulating as it is page-turning; sometimes desperately sad, but often mesmerisingly beautiful

This monumental opus follows a single drop of water as it creates a backdrop not just for otherwise unconnected lives but for a lost epic poem

The Big Issue - Big Issue's top picks of the year

In Victorian London, an extraordinary child is born at the edge of the dirt-black Thames. When his brilliant memory earns him a spot as an apprentice at a printing press, the world opens up far beyond the slums and across the seas.In 2014 in Turkey, Narin, a Yazidi girl living by the River Tigris, waits to be baptized. The ceremony is cruelly interrupted, and soon she and her grandmother must journey across war-torn lands in the hope of reaching the sacred valley of their people.In 2018 in London, broken-hearted Zaleekhah, a hydrologist, moves to a houseboat on the Thames to escape the wreckage of her marriage – until an unexpected connection to her homeland changes everything.A dazzling feat of storytelling from one of the greatest writers of our time, one that spans centuries and continents, this is the story of one lost poem, two great rivers and three remarkable lives – all connected by a single drop of water.

Elif Shafak

Praise for There are Rivers in the Sky

It will make you think, cry, rage – and hope. It is Elif Shafak at her best

Gloriously expansive and intellectually rich... a magnificent achievement

Richly evocative. A fascinating stream of storytelling.

It will make you think, cry, rage – and hope. It is Elif Shafak at her best

Gloriously expansive and intellectually rich... a magnificent achievement

Richly evocative. A fascinating stream of storytelling.

It will make you think, cry, rage – and hope. It is Elif Shafak at her best

Gloriously expansive and intellectually rich... a magnificent achievement

Richly evocative. A fascinating stream of storytelling.

Books by Elif Shafak

Articles featuring Elif Shafak

12 books that make great gifts for Eid

10 books about Muslim experiences to read this Ramadan

Must-read books by women, as chosen by our readers

Where to start reading Elif Shafak’s books

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Praise for There are Rivers in the Sky

It will make you think, cry, rage – and hope. It is Elif Shafak at her best

Gloriously expansive and intellectually rich... a magnificent achievement

Richly evocative. A fascinating stream of storytelling.

It will make you think, cry, rage – and hope. It is Elif Shafak at her best

Gloriously expansive and intellectually rich... a magnificent achievement

Richly evocative. A fascinating stream of storytelling.

It will make you think, cry, rage – and hope. It is Elif Shafak at her best

Gloriously expansive and intellectually rich... a magnificent achievement

Richly evocative. A fascinating stream of storytelling.

Books by Elif Shafak

Sign up to the Elif Shafak newsletter

Articles featuring Elif Shafak

12 books that make great gifts for Eid

10 books about Muslim experiences to read this Ramadan

Must-read books by women, as chosen by our readers

Where to start reading Elif Shafak’s books

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter