The Bastard of Istanbul

<p><b>A gripping and beautiful novel from Elif Shafak, Booker-shortlisted author of <i>10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World</i></b> <p><b>One rainy afternoon in Istanbul, a woman walks into a doctor's surgery. 'I need to have an abortion', she announces. She is nineteen years old and unmarried. What happens that afternoon will change her life.</b> <p>Twenty years later, Asya Kazanci lives with her extended family in Istanbul. Due to a mysterious family curse, all the Kaznci men die in their early forties, so it is a house of women, among them Asya's beautiful, rebellious mother Zeliha, who runs a tattoo parlour; Banu, who has newly discovered herself as clairvoyant; and Feride, a hypochondriac obsessed with impending disaster. And when Asya's Armenian-American cousin Armanoush comes to stay, long hidden family secrets connected with Turkey's turbulent past begin to emerge. <p>'Wonderfully magical, incredible, breathtaking...will have you gasping with disbelief in the last few pages' <i>Sunday Express</i> <p><b>'A beautiful book, the finest I have read about Turkey' <i>Irish Times</i></b> <p><b>'Heartbreaking...the beauty of Islam pervades Shafak's book' <i>Vogue</i></b> <p><b>Elif Shafak's latest novel <i>The Island of Missing Trees</i> is available for pre-order now</b></p>