The Island of Missing Trees
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  • Published: 12 April 2022
  • ISBN: 9780241988725
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $26.00

The Island of Missing Trees

Reese's Pick

Formats & editions
Paperback
12 Apr 2022
EBook
5 Aug 2021
Audiobook
5 Aug 2021
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The Sunday Times bestselling novel about two star-crossed lovers in war-torn Cyprus

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.
  • Published: 12 April 2022
  • ISBN: 9780241988725
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $26.00
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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.'

Also by Elif Shafak

There are Rivers in the Sky
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World
Three Daughters of Eve
The Bastard of Istanbul
The Forty Rules of Love
The Architect's Apprentice
Black Milk
See all

Praise for The Island of Missing Trees

[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

One of the best writers in the world today

Hanif Kureishi

An intimate, affecting memoir . . . Her passion for literature is contagious

Colleen Mondor on Black Milk

A wise novel of love and grief, roots and branches, displacement and home, faith and belief. The Island of Missing Trees is balm for our bruised times

David Mitchell, author of Utopia Avenue

The Island of Missing Trees, for all its uses of enchantment, is a complex and powerful work in which the harrowing material settles on the reader delicately

FT

The Island of Missing Trees is a magical masterpiece . . . Elif Shafak has done it again with this brilliant novel of the secrets of hearts, the history of Cyprus and the beauty of memory. Truly full of miracles.

Kate Williams

Poignant . . . [Shafak] knows exactly when to dangle unanswered questions, when to drench our senses, when to offer meaningful musings, elegant metaphors and tugs at the heartstrings

Sunday Times

Compassionate and enchanting, it's a transporting tale of roots, renewal and talking trees

Mail on Sunday, Best New Fiction

Enchanting . . . Shafak's writing is poised and expressive, remarkable for its charm and lyricism . . . The novel is a tapestry of heavy emotions, but it's one that's spun with brightness

Sunday Telegraph, Novel of the Week

The Cyprus setting is stunningly described in this spellbinding story about identity, love and loss

Good Housekeeping, 'this month's 10 books to read right now' (September)

The Island of Missing Trees is a strong and enthralling work: its world of superstition, natural beauty and harsh tribal loyalties becomes your world . . . for all its uses of enchantment, it is a complex and powerful work in which the harrowing material settles on the reader delicately

FT

A wonderful rebuke to anthropocentric storytelling . . . Elif's extraordinary new novel about grief, love and memory

Literary Review

The Cyprus setting is stunningly described in this spellbinding story about identity, love and loss

Good Houskeeping, best books to read this month

This is a sweeping, romantic tale about love and loss that's so evocative you can smell honeysuckle and figs wafting from the pages

Red, best books to read this autumn

The wounds inflicted and the search for healing across three generations is explored in the tales of its unforgettable characters . . . beyond the narrative, the author's longing to dissolve barriers between people and the natural world is evident. A beautiful read

Woman & Home, September Book Club Pick

If Ms Shafak's subjects are sombre, her magical-realist style is anything but . . . Shafak does not shrink from the reality of violence, but she salvages tenderness - even joy - form the wreckage of 20th century history

Economist

The Island of Missing Trees asks us important questions about losing home, about coping and secrets . . . this is a beautiful novel . . . made ferocious by its uncompromising empathy

Guardian, Book of the Day

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

Publishers Weekly

A magical story about nature, humanity and love . . . a beautiful contemplation of some of life's biggest questions about identity, history and meaning

Time, Anticipated Book for Fall 2021