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.

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.

Elif Shafak is a unique and powerful voice in world literature

A writer of important, beautiful, painful, truthful novels

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.

One of the best writers in the world today

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

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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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