Elif Shafak

honour

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From the bestselling author of The Island of Missing Trees

There are Rivers in the Sky

The Forty Rules of Love

Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022

The Island of Missing Trees

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World

The Bastard of Istanbul

Three Daughters of Eve

The Gaze

The Architect's Apprentice

The Flea Palace

On Motherhood and Writing

Black Milk

A Personal Meditation on the Dangers of Identity

The Happiness of Blond People

Honour

A powerful book; thoughtful, provoking and compassionate

Fascinating and gripping - a wonderful novel

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

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

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

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

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

From Booker-shortlisted author Elif Shafak, Honour is a gripping tale of love, betrayal and clashing cultures. 
 
'My mother died twice. I promised myself I would not let her story be forgotten' 
 
Pembe and Adem Toprak leave Turkey for London. There they make new lives for their family. Yet the traditions and beliefs of their home come with them - carried in the blood of their children, Iskender and Esma. Trapped by past mistakes, the Toprak children find their lives torn apart and transformed by a brutal and chilling crime. 
 
Set in Turkey and London in the 1970s, Honour explores pain and loss, loyalty and betrayal, the clash of tradition and modernity, as well as the love and heartbreak that can tear any family apart. 
 
'One of the best writers in the world today' Hanif Kureishi 
 
'Vivid storytelling... that explores the darkest aspects of faith and love' Sunday Telegraph 
 
*** ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, IS AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW ***

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist and the most widely read female author in Turkey. She writes in both Turkish and English, and has published seventeen books, eleven of which are novels. Her work has been translated into fifty languages. Shafak holds a PhD in political science and she has taught at various universities in Turkey, the US and the UK, including St Anne's College, Oxford University, where she is an honorary fellow. She is a member of World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Creative Economy and a founding member of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). An advocate for women's rights, LGBT rights and freedom of speech, Shafak is an inspiring public speaker and twice a TED global speaker, each time receiving a standing ovation. Shafak contributes to many major publications around the world and she has been awarded the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. In 2017 she was chosen by Politico as one of the twelve people who would make the world better. She has judged numerous literary prizes and is chairing the Wellcome Prize 2019. Find out more about Elif Shafak on her website: www.elifshafak.com

'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

Honour

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Elif Shafak

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