The Bastard of Istanbul

Description

By Elif Şafak

Asya Kazanci is nineteen, lives in Istanbul in a house full of women, and has no idea who her father is. Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian is her step-cousin, an Armenian-American who arrives from San Francisco without telling her family, looking for what happened to her grandmother’s people in 1915.

The two families turn out to share more than a marriage. Şafak was prosecuted in Turkey for the things her Armenian characters say in this book, and acquitted.

First published 2006