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  • Published: 24 June 2015
  • ISBN: 9780241972946
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $32.00
Categories:

Honour




A powerful, moving and shocking novel about a clash of cultures that tears a family apart

'My mother died twice. I promised myself I would not let her story be forgotten'

And so begins the story of Esma a young Kurdish woman in London trying to come to terms with the terrible murder her brother has committed. Esma tells the story of her family stretching back three generations; back to her grandmother and the births of her mother and Aunt in a village on the edge of the Euphrates.

Named Pembe and Jamila, meaning Pink and Beautiful rather than the names their mother wanted to call them, Destiny and Enough, the twin girls have very different futures ahead of them all of which will end in tragedy on a street in East London in 1978.

A powerful, brilliant and moving account of murder, love and family set in a Kurdish village, Istanbul and London

  • Published: 24 June 2015
  • ISBN: 9780241972946
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $32.00
Categories:

About the author

Elif Shafak

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish novelist whose work has been translated into fifty-five languages. The author of nineteen books, twelve of which are novels, she is a bestselling author in many countries around the world. Shafak's latest novel, The Island of Missing Trees, was a top ten Sunday Times bestseller, a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick and was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the Women's Prize. Her previous novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the RSL Ondaatje Prize; longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award; and chosen as Blackwell's Book of the Year. She is a Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature. Shafak was awarded the Halldór Laxness International Literature Prize for her contribution to 'the renewal of the art of storytelling.'

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Praise for Honour

A powerful book; thoughtful, provoking and compassionate

Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat

Fascinating and gripping - a wonderful novel

Rosamund Lupton, author of Sister

Elif Shafak has woven with masterful care and compassion one immigrant family's heartbreaking story - a story nurtured in the terrible silences between men and women

Sarah Blake, author of The Postmistress

Honour is a powerful tale of family connection and heartbreak, offering us insight and delight in equal measure . . . an exquisite and deep rendering of the fullness of life.

Aurelie Sheehan, author of The Anxiety of Everyday Objects

[Elif Shafak] joins writers such as Hanif Kureishi, Zadie Smith, Monica Ali, Aamer Hussein, Andrea Levy, Hanan al-Shakyh and Leila Aboulela, who offer us fictional glimpses of London's Others

The Independent

An honour killing is at the centre of this stunning novel . . . Exotic, evocative and utterly gripping

The Times

Lushly and memorably magic-realist . . . This is an extraordinarily skilfully crafted and ambitious narrative

The Independent

Shafak treats an important, absorbing subject in a fast-paced, internationally familiar style that will make it accessible to a wide readership

Sunday Times

Compelling

Mariella Frostrup