The Island of Missing Trees
Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022
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4.2 • 106 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. The taverna It is 1974 on the island of Cyprus. Two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided land, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home. The tavern is the only place that Kostas, who is Greek and Christian, and Defne, who is Turkish and Muslim, can meet, in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic, chilli peppers and wild herbs. This is where one can find the best food in town, the best music, the best wine. But there is something else to the place: it makes one forget, even if for just a few hours, the world outside and its immoderate sorrows.
In the centre of the tavern, growing through a cavity in the roof, is a fig tree. This tree will witness their hushed, happy meetings, their silent, surreptitious departures; and the tree will be there when the war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to rubble, when the teenagers vanish and break apart.
Decades later in north London, sixteen-year-old Ada Kazantzakis has never visited the island where her parents were born. Desperate for answers, she seeks to untangle years of secrets, separation and silence. The only connection she has to the land of her ancestors is a Ficus Carica growing in the back garden of their home.
In The Island of Missing Trees, prizewinning author Elif Shafak brings us a rich, magical tale of belonging and identity, love and trauma, memory and amnesia, human-induced destruction of nature, and, finally, renewal.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Booker-shortlisted Shafak (10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World) amazes with this resonant story of the generational trauma of the Cypriot Civil War. Just before Christmas in the late 2010s, 16-year-old Ada Kazantzakis confounds her London classmates by screaming during class. Shortly after, Ada and her botanist father, Kostas, receive a visit from Meryem, an aunt she's never met, the older sister of her dead mother, Defne. Ada feels growing shame about the scream, and is surly toward the free-spirited Meryem, who spouts strange adages such as, "We're not going to search for a calf under an ox." Shafak then jumps back to 1974, when Greek Cypriot Kostas and Turkish Cypriot Defne had assignations in a taverna built around a living fig tree, which narrates part of the book and offers lessons on the human condition via anecdotes about insects and birds. Kostas's mother, meanwhile, prompted by her disapproval of the courtship and worried over growing violence, sends him to London. Defne and Kostas are later reacquainted in the early 2000s on Cyprus, where she works searching for bodies of the disappeared. The reunion uncovers delicate secrets while expertly giving a sense of the civil war's lingering damage, and by the end Ada's story reaches an unexpected and satisfying destination. Shafak's fans are in for a treat, and those new to her will be eager to discover her earlier work.
Customer Reviews
Elf shamal: island of missing trees
Fabulous from start to finish , mesmerising , engaging as a story through time , packed with facts , best book I have read for ages! Loved it
A poignant portrait of human love, joy and suffering.
A heart rending fictional account of the division of Cyprus from an unbiased, humanitarian viewpoint. I loved the tender narrative of the esteemed fig tree who has deep connections with the Cypriot identity and all the arboreal imagery and ornithological imagery made this book a delightful linguistic achievement as well. I wanted to read it all over again as soon as I had finished.
Beguiling
I thoroughly enjoyed this book which is by turns heartbreaking and hopeful. It’s full of charm whilst addressing deep and troubling aspects of life and the innate destructiveness of humanity. Brilliantly written hauntingly memorable.