Name: Honor
ISBN: 9780670784837

Elif Shafak

Honor

Michelle Dsouza

Honour by Elif Shafak is one of those books where the premise hooks you immediately. It’s a blend of historical fiction and family saga, moving between Turkey and London, and it digs straight into the heavy stuff: what “honor” means, who gets to define it, and how shame can quietly shape generations. At its core, it’s about family, identity, migration, and the dangerous weight of tradition. Shafak explores how women’s lives can become battlegrounds for community expectations, and how love, loyalty, fear, and control can get tangled together until people start mistaking harm for duty. The themes are powerful, and the cultural lens is genuinely interesting. You can feel the intention behind the story, and there are moments where it really lands. For me, the execution didn’t fully match the premise. I appreciated what the book was trying to do more than I actually enjoyed reading it. Parts felt emotionally distant, and the pacing dragged in places, so even though the ideas are strong, I didn’t feel as pulled along as I wanted to be. It’s the kind of book I respected, underlined mentally, and still found myself putting down more often than expected. That said, if you like thoughtful, theme-driven fiction that wrestles with honor and shame, and you don’t mind a slower, more reflective style, this is worth reading for the conversations it sparks. Rating: 3/5 for me. Interesting premise and important themes, but it didn’t hit with the emotional punch I was hoping for.

Vivek Chand

A story which blends the culture of a Turkish immigrant family between Turkey and UK. And much about how they view the honor of family.

Elif Şafak

Wydawnictwo Literackie

The lives of twin sisters born in 1940s Turkey diverge when one stays in their childhood village and becomes a revered midwife while the other moves to London with her bitter husband and three children.

Paulina 

O tym jak mężczyznom wolno, a kobietom nie. Jak ich ciało zostaje elementem targu, jak o jego czystości decydują inni. I o tym jak kult maczyzmu potrafi zniszczyć życie.
"Gasząc jedno życie, Iskander tak naprawdę zabił wielu ludzi".

Honor

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