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Chosen for the Waterstone's Discovers Promotion 2006

Keen irony and humour amongst the cats and tomb thieves of Istanbul

The setting is a stately residence in Istanbul built by Russian noble émigré Pavel Antipov for his wife Agripina at the end of the Tsarist reign, now sadly dilapidated, flea-infested, and home to ten families. Shafak uses the narrative structure of A Thousand and One Nights to construct a story-within-a-story narrative. Inhabitants include Ethel, a lapsed Jew in search of true love and the sad and beautiful Blue Mistress whose personal secret provides the novel with an unforgettable denouement. Add to this a strange, intensifying stench whose cause is revealed at the end of the book, and we have a metaphor for the cultural and spiritual decay in the heart of Istanbul

'Shafak can switch from a picareque tale of a father and son's broken noses to astute observations of how strangely depair and love manifest themselves without pausing.' The Guardian

'A cast of wacky flat-dwellers lend it punch and pizazz' The Independent

Elif Shafak was born in 1971 in Strasbourg,and spent her teenage years in Spain, before returning to Turkey. She has become an outstanding name amongst young Turkish authors. She has written five novels, and won the Mevlana Prize for the best work in mystical and transcendental literature. She is in the middle of a residency at the Massachusetts ‘Five College Program’ in Women’s Studies, and resides in Mount Holyoke, USA.

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Price: £7.99/$14.95
Format: Paperback Original
ISBN: 0-7145-3120-0
Fiction
Publication: July 2005