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
Imprint: Penguin
Published: 05/04/2012
ISBN: 9780670921171
Length: 352 Pages
RRP: £8.99
Colourfully woven and beguilingly intelligent
A powerful book; thoughtful, provoking and compassionate
A gorgeous, jewelled, luxurious book
Rich and wide as the Euphrates river along whose banks it begins and ends, 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 trying to grow within ancient ways, all the while growing past them. I loved this book
Elif Shafak tells stories of great urgency, heart, and intellectual acuity. Honour is a powerful tale of family connection and heartbreak, offering us insight and delight in equal measure. This is a compulsively readable novel, an exquisite and deep rendering of the fullness of life.
Shafak will challenge Paulo Coelho's dominance
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
In Honour, Shafak treats an important, absorbing subject in a fast-paced, internationally familiar style that will make it accessible to a wide readership