The Island of Missing Trees: A Novel
- ISBN-10
- 1635578604
- ISBN-13
- 9781635578607
- Category
- Fiction
- Pages
- 368
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2021-11-02
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing USA
- Author
- Elif Shafak
Description
A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction "A wise novel of love and grief, roots and branches, displacement and home, faith and belief. Balm for our bruised times." -David Mitchell, author of Utopia Avenue A rich, magical new novel on belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature and renewal, from the Booker-shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World. Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns. He is a botanist looking for native species, but really, he's searching for lost love. Years later a Ficus carica grows in the back garden of a house in London where Ada Kazantzakis lives. This tree is her only connection to an island she has never visited--- her only connection to her family's troubled history and her complex identity as she seeks to untangle years of secrets to find her place in the world. A moving, beautifully written, and delicately constructed story of love, division, transcendence, history, and eco-consciousness, The Island of Missing Trees is Elif Shafak's best work yet.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
The Road Home
By Rose TremainLev is on his way to Britain to seek work, so that he can send money back to eastern Europe to support his mother and little daughter.
-
Reading Group Choices
By Reading Group ChoicesReading Group Choices
-
Eliza Waite: A Novel
By Ashley E. SweeneyMole, Richard, Rebel Women of the Gold Rush, Heritage House, Victoria, B.C., Canada, 1998. Morgan, Lael, Good Time Girls, Epicenter Press, Fairbanks, 1998. Morgan, Murray, One Man's Gold Rush, University of Washington Press, Seattle, ...
-
Lucky
By Marissa StapleyLucky Armstrong is a tough, talented grifter who has just pulled off a million-dollar heist with her boyfriend, Cary.
-
The People in the Trees: A Novel
By Hanya YanagiharaBut his discovery has come at a terrible cost, not only for the islanders, but for Perina himself. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s bestselling new novel, To Paradise, available now.
-
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World
By Elif ShafakTogether they dangled strips of fabric from apple boughs laden with blossom, calling them ballerinas, took their sweet time to weave little baskets out of willow or crowns out of daisies; tied ribbons around the horns of the ram waiting ...
-
The Greek Revolution: 1821 and the Making of Modern Europe
By Mark MazowerWinner of the Duff Cooper Prize • One of The Economist's top history books of the year From one of our leading historians, an important new history of the Greek War of Independence—the ultimate worldwide liberal cause célèbre of the ...
-
How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division: The powerful, pocket-sized manifesto
By Elif ShafakIn this powerful, uplifting plea for conscious optimism, Booker Prize-nominated novelist and activist Elif Shafak draws on her own memories and delves into the power of stories to bring us together.
-
Three Daughters of Eve
By Elif ShafakIn Three Daughters of Eve, she has given us a rich and moving story that humanizes and personalizes one of the most profound sea changes of the modern world.
-
The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi
By Elif ShafakIn this lyrical, exuberant tale, acclaimed Turkish author Elif Shafak, author of The Island of Missing Trees (a Reese's Book Club Pick), incarnates Rumi's timeless message of love The Forty Rules of Love unfolds two tantalizing parallel ...