The Flea Palace

byElif Shafak

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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.

Picaresque charm with a touch of magic realism

Independent

About Elif Shafak

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish novelist, whose work has been translated into fifty-seven languages. The author of twenty books, fourteen of which are novels, she is a bestselling author in many countries around the world. Shafak's previous novel, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, was the UK’s bestselling literary hardback novel of 2025, selling over 500,000 copies. Her work has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, amongst others, and she is currently nominated for ‘Author of the Year’ at the British Book Awards. Elif Shafak was appointed President of the Royal Society of Literature in 2025. Her books have sold several million copies worldwide.
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Details
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • ISBN: 9780241201909
  • Length: 448 pages
  • Dimensions: 197mm x 26mm x 128mm
  • Weight: 315g
  • Price: £9.99
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