Name: The Bastard of Istanbul
ISBN: 9780141919430

Elif Shafak

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. 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. 'Wonderfully magical, incredible, breathtaking...will have you gasping with disbelief in the last few pages' Sunday Express 'A beautiful book, the finest I have read about Turkey' Irish Times 'Heartbreaking...the beauty of Islam pervades Shafak's book' Vogue

The Bastard of Istanbul

Srijita Sarkar 

Only then it dawned in her that her real objection to Allah was not his—that's to say, His—not having any blood but rather having to many blood-sisters, to many to care for so as to end up not carrying for anyone. 

When you didn't tell anyone the extraordinary, everyone assumed the normal, Armanoush discovered at an early age. 

Armanoush looked at her relatives with a stare that bordered on desperate. What could she do? How could she be independent when they were so frighteningly close? How could she convince them that they didn’t have to worry so much about her when they had had so much in life to worry about? How could she break free from her genetic heritage, especially when a part of her was so proud of it? How could she fight off the kindness of her loved ones? Could goodness be fought?

"When you drink you drink to extremes, when you criticize you bulldoze, when you get down you sink and hit the bottom. I honestly don’t know how to approach you. You are so full of rage, baby. . . .”

“Perhaps it’s because I was born a bastard,” remarked Asya, taking another puff. “I don’t even know who my father is. I never ask, they never tell. Sometimes when my mother looks at me I think she sees him in my face but never says a word. We all pretend there is no such thing as father. Instead there is only Father, with a capital F. When you have Allah up there in the sky to look after you, who needs a father? Aren’t we all His children? Not that my mother buys that crap. I tell you she is more cynical than any woman I’ve ever known. And that is precisely where the problem is. My mom and I, we are so alike and yet so distant.”

"There is no cure better than a good screw and a good joint."

How could she reveal she had had numerous relations in the past, way too many, as if to take revenge on men, but the revenge of what, she still couldn't tell. 

From where the Celestial Gaze is situated, from that high above, all these sporadically lit bulbs must seem in prefect harmony, constantly flickering, as if chiding a cryptic message to God.

Noor Habib

“I know every single street in this town… and I love strolling these streets in the mornings, in the evenings, and then at nights when I am merry and tipsy. I love to have breakfasts with my friends along the Bosphorus on Sundays, I love to walk alone amid the crowds. I am in love with the chaotic beauty of this city, the ferries, the music, the tales, the sadness, the colors, and the black humor…” 

Michelle Dsouza

The Bastard of Istanbul had everything I usually love in a novel: a vivid setting, messy family history, intergenerational secrets, and a story rooted in identity, memory, and the political weight people inherit whether they want to or not. It follows two families, one in Istanbul and one Armenian-American, and gradually brings Asya Kazanci and Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian into the same emotional and historical orbit. On paper, this should have been a complete winner for me. What the book is clearly trying to do is bigger than just telling a family story. It is trying to explore what happens when private lives are shaped by public silences, when family mythology collides with historical trauma, and when belonging becomes something fractured rather than inherited whole. I think that ambition is real, and I do think Elif Shafak largely understands the scale of what she is reaching for. My issue was that, for a long stretch, I felt that ambition much more than momentum. This is a slow book. Not thoughtful-slow in a way that quietly tightens around you, but slow in a way that made me feel very aware of how much I was waiting for it to become itself. There are beautiful observations throughout, and Istanbul is drawn with such richness that it feels less like backdrop and more like an active force in the novel. The food, the moods, the contradictions, the old resentments humming under daily life, all of that is wonderfully done. But for a large part of the book, I was reading more out of patience than out of pull. That said, I do think the novel earns a lot of credit for what it becomes in the final stretch. Once the threads start tightening, the book suddenly feels much more precise. The emotional logic sharpens. The narrative stops wandering and starts landing. And the late reveal is excellent. No spoilers, but it is the kind of twist that does not just shock for the sake of it. It reorders the book around itself and makes you look back differently at what came before. That ending honestly raised the whole novel for me. Shafak’s prose is probably the book’s most consistent strength. She writes with elegance and intelligence, and there is a kind of lush, reflective quality to the novel that suits its themes well. The characters are also interesting enough to hold attention, especially within the family dynamics, though I would not say all of them felt equally vivid. For me, the book worked better as a novel of atmosphere, history, and buried tension than as one driven by urgent character momentum. So where did I land? Somewhere in the middle. I can absolutely see why people love this. It is thoughtful, culturally rich, thematically layered, and it ends very strongly. But I cannot ignore how long it took to get there. For me, this was a book I respected more than I was consistently absorbed by. If you love literary fiction, historical weight, complicated family sagas, and books that save a lot of their force for the final act, there is a good chance this will work much better for you than it did for me. If pacing matters a lot to you, just know this is very much a slow burn, and one that asks for patience before it pays off. A rich, intelligent novel with a genuinely strong ending, but one that took too long to fully come alive.

Patrick Book

What even was that?

I would've given this three stars but the intensely ham-fisted last 10 pages would not allow that.

Beautifully written and touching, exploring history, family, relationships, food, love, and how the past is felt in the present. Brings Istanbul vividly to life.

Laura Dobie

sınav var diye okuyup kafamı kurcalayarak tekrar okumak istediğim kitaplardan biri

maden eleştiri

Prashanth Srivatsa

Set partly in kitchens, and partly in buzzing cafes, the novel follows Asya, a 19-yo rebellious girl born into a family where men do not live long, and Armanoush, an Armenian relative of Asya. Shafak beautifully explores the relationship between the two girls, and the women who foster Asya's growth while she uncovers the mystery of her parentage. The poster-adorned walls, the Johnny Cash music, the trips to the cyber cafes and the unforgettable cuisine all serve as backdrop to the effects of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 by the Turks, ultimately affecting the girls and questioning the relevance of borders in today’s world.

Sanaa Shaltout

معجبنيش الربط بين إن شوشان يتيمة وآسيا لقيطة ولا إن ليفنت قاسي ومصطفي أناني وشخصيته غريبة كدا مع إنه كان مدلل كتير ممكن يطلع فيه جزء من القسوة لكن أنه حقير للدرجة دى ممكن من الكبت .. الرواية عامة معجبتنيش نهائى وفيها أخطاء زى الناس اللى ركبت على سفينة سيدنا نوح وطبق العاشوره حكايات كلها تأليف وليست حقيقه ، وكل القواعد اللى فى الرواية مستفادتش منها من الآخر مطلعتش برسالة من الروايه نهائى .

Saima A

i was not expecting that twist at allllll, sometimes the perspectives jump around a lot but it was good

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. Twenty years later, Asya Kazanci lives with her extended family in Istanbul. Due to a mysterious family curse, all the Kazanci men die in their early forties, so it's a house of women, among them Asya's beautiful, rebellious mother who runs a tattoo parlour; Banu, who has newly discovered herself as a clairvoyant; and Feride, a hypochondriac obsessed with impending disaster. And when Asya's cousin comes to stay, long-hidden family secrets connected with Turkey's turbulent past begin to emerge.

Lauren B

This book was full of colors, smells, food, music, faces, voices, stories. It was so vivid, I did not feel like I was reading anymore. It felt like I was there with the characters and seeing everything with my own eyes. I loved the atmosphere created by Elif Shafak. It was a lovely chaos, if I can say so. She has a powerful writing, full of humour and courage that will catch your attention and tease your curiosity.

Ramses Struijker Boudiee

Safiya 

Finally grasping Elif's way of writing... Oppositions, contrasts, intermingled stories,... I should write a more elaborate review!


Out of routine, I opened this book two years ago but was not in the mood for fiction and I only read Elif when feeling trapped in my non-fic in order to aerate my mind and eyes!
Along the years, Elif has mastered her own style that is so marketing oriented It's no surprise that she is amassing prize after another.
Hers are page turners because she knows her audience too well to address their logical mind, instead of which she fills her texts with good wit, exotic quotes and magical words, those that unlock one's imagination... In fact, magic is a constant in her books be it in a form of a Jinn or the weird Thumbnellas (which to this day I still despise in her book Black Milk) The thing is she always made sure to have two parallel universes where boundaries are ambiguous and blurry... The first book I have ever read written by her was "The 40 Rules of Love", at that time I felt like reading two books at the same time... Back then I was ignorant of her style... 
Her usual themes are all built on contradictions Love/Hate, Faith/Secularism, Reality/Dreams, Femininity/Masculinity, Life/Death, Beginning/End.... Etc which is characteristic of the recent story telling techniques (I happen to be reading a book about it simultaneously)... Elif's mastery is also clear in the fact that nothing she puts in her book is useless nor without purpose, I felt that in "The Bastard of İstanbul" clearly more than in "The Forty Rules of Love" and it was again confirmed in her latest "10 minutes and 38 seconds" or "Three Daughters of Eve"...
I guess that Shafak is an author worthy of following closely not because of the themes she writes about, more about her technical writing capacities... In Arabic she is a حرايفيّة... فعلا تمتهن حرفة كتابة القصص...

And back to the book, full of manifestos and rules as is the custom with her... She built her story around characters not events and it has made me feel compassionate all along with the events and all... One of the important lessons for creative writing I deduce is starting with defining your characters first and imagining the links they might develop.. A bit similar to a thesis chapters: work on each chapter first, each theme is a character that fits in the bigger scheme of the problem statement... although one might think that a thesis has no creative writing in it I believe that you can't write one without it!
Anyway, I enjoyed to be back in the streets of Istanbul, to be hearing the ferries approaching the shore on the Bosphorous,... The city itself is so full of contradictions that Elif, just like Orhan, has no trouble in placing her characters in it.

One rainy afternoon in Istanbul a woman walks into a doctor's surgery. 'I want an abortion', she announces. She is nineteen years old, and unmarried. What happens that afternoon is to change her life, and the lives of everyone around her. Twenty years later, Asya Kazanci lives with her extended family in Istanbul. Due to a mysterious family curse all the men die by age 41, so it is a house of women, among them her beautiful, rebellious mother, Zeliha, clairvoyant Auntie Banu and bar-brawl widow, Auntie Cevriye. But when Asya's Armenian-American cousin Armanoush comes to stay, long-hidden family secrets and Turkey's turbulent past begin to emerge.

Pia Sophia

I loved this book so much! I admire Shafak for her storytelling. My heart aches for Zeliha and Asya and Armanoush. It warmed my heart to read how Shafak handled the ongoing Turkey vs Armenia issues. And how everything came in place... it was like finishing a puzzle; satisfying and sad at the same time.

The Bastard of Istanbul

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