Honor
A Novel
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4.8 • 13 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
An honor killing shatters and transforms the lives of Turkish immigrants in 1970s London in this novel from the author of The Island of Missing Trees (a Reese's Book Club pick)
Internationally bestselling Turkish author Elif Shafak’s new novel is a dramatic tale of families, love, and misunderstandings that follows the destinies of twin sisters born in a Kurdish village. While Jamila stays to become a midwife, Pembe follows her Turkish husband, Adem, to London, where they hope to make new lives for themselves and their children.
In London, they face a choice: stay loyal to the old traditions or try their best to fit in. After Adem abandons his family, Iskender, the eldest son, must step in and become the one who will not let any shame come to the family name. And when Pembe begins a chaste affair with a man named Elias, Iskender will discover that you could love someone with all your heart and yet be ready to hurt them.
Just published to great acclaim in England, Honor is a powerful, gripping exploration of guilt and innocence, loyalty and betrayal, and the trials of the immigrant, as well as the love and heartbreak that too often tear families apart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Shafak (The Bastard of Istanbul) grips the reader from the opening page when, in 1992, Iskender Toprek is finally released from an English prison, to be picked up by his sister Esma. As Esma narrates the shifts in time, space, and perspective, it is soon revealed that Iskender was incarcerated for the murder of his own mother; the details of how and why shared in flashbacks from various members of the Toprek family, Turkish/Kurdish immigrants in 1970s London. Adem, the father, has "abandoned his family for a dancer," while mother Pembe has had an affair of her own. In a school with few immigrant students, only daughter Esma attempts to fit in; youngest son Yunus falls in with a group of squatters who distrust the government, and Iskender attempts to take on the role of protecting his family after Adem leaves the household. Quotidian events in each character's life begin to mesh and Esma tries to make sense of the murder, but they culminate with a surprising turn. Shafak's wonderfully expressive prose, sprinkled throughout with Turkish words and phrases, brings the characters to life in such a way that readers will feel they are living the roles.
