I just finished reading The Bastard of Istanbul, which I found quite charming and delightful. The novel, written by Turkish author Elif Shafak, revolves around the stories of two young women and their families. Asya is the bastard child, a chain-smoking, free-thinking 19-year old hellion growing up in a family of women in Istanbul, Turkey. A
my, or Armanoush is the dreamy teenager daughter of an Armenian man and an American woman. When Amy decides to visit her stepfather’s extended family in Turkey and comes to stay at Asya’s house, a complicated series of events unfolds. As the novel continues, the connections between the two families, Armenian and Turkish, are shown to be far deeper than the two girls ever imagined. I didn’t expect to like the novel, but I gave it a chance and was hooked by the second chapter. At times I was a little confused, there were a lot of names to keep track of. But the story itself was so fascinating, I couldn’t put it down. Afterwords, I found out that author Shafak was one of many Turkish intellectuals targeted by her government for to the Armenian genocide in this very novel. Good read. Highly recommended.
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