The Island of Missing Trees
The war-torn love story set in 1970s Cyprus, shortlisted for the Women's Prize
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4.2 • 5 Ratings
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- €7.99
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022
THE TOP TEN SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER & REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK
*****
You don't fall in love in Cyprus in the summer of 1974. Not here, not now.
In 1974, two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided Cyprus, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home. The tavern is the only place that Kostas, who is Greek, and Defne who is Turkish, can meet in secret, hidden beneath the leaves of a fig tree growing through the roof of the tavern. This tree will witness their hushed happy meetings, and will be there when the war breaks out and the teenagers vanish.
Decades later in north London, sixteen-year-old Ada has never visited the island where her parents were born. She seeks to untangle years of her family's silence, but the only connection she has to the land of her ancestors Is a fig tree growing tin the garden of their home . . .
*****
'This book moved me to tears . . . in the best way. Powerful and poignant' Reese Witherspoon
'A brilliant novel -- one that rings with Shafak's characteristic compassion' Robert Macfarlane
'This is an enchanting, compassionate and wise novel and storytelling at its most sublime' Polly Samson
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.
