![]() ![]() It grew originally in the taverna where Kostas, a Greek Cypriot, and Defne, a Turkish Cypriot, used to meet as teenagers – a restaurant that was reduced to rubble when it was bombed in 1974 – and thanks to this, it knows everything that they’ve been through: the pain of separation, the melancholy of exile. Grown from a cutting that was smuggled from Cyprus to London by its owner, Kostas, after he and his forbidden love, Defne, left the island in search of a new beginning, it has seen it all, this little fig. And while her new novel, The Island of Missing Trees – her first since the Booker-shortlisted 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World – is certainly political, its themes to do with violence and loss, it’s also a passionate love story, one of whose most important characters just happens to be – yes – a gentle and sagacious tree. ![]() ![]() Gentle and warm, her voice is never emphatic she smiles with her (green) eyes as well as her mouth. In person, however, you get no immediate sense of this. A fierce advocate for equality and freedom of speech, her views have brought her into conflict with the increasingly repressive government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. ![]() Shafak, who is sometimes described as Turkey’s most famous female writer, has a reputation for outspokenness. ![]()
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