“Istanbul is a hodgepodge of ten million lives. It is an open book of ten million scrambled stories. Istanbul is waking up from its perturbed sleep, ready for the chaos of the rush hour. From now on there are too many prayers to answer, too many profanities to note, and too many sinners, as well as too many innocents, to keep an eye on.”

I’ve read a few books from Turkish authors and they have the same thing in common: Istanbul is always an important character. Istanbul is a city that defines stories in a way that the same story couldn’t have happened anywhere else. Since the beginning of western history, Istanbul has been a point of collusion that has shaped the world as we know it. The importance of the city deeply affects the life of its inhabitants, or in our case, of the characters. For this reason, I felt completely drawn to this book; The Bastard of Istanbul.

The novel centers around the lives of two young women, Asya Kazancı and Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian, one Istanbulite and one American-Armenian. Asya is a bastard, her mother got pregnant with her at the age of 19,  and was raised by a collective of aunties -Asya even calls her mother “aunt”-. She doesn’t know who her father is and accepts that she might never know it. For that reason she doesn’t like to think about the past and keeps looking forward. Armanoush, torn apart by her American mother and Armenian father, travels to Istanbul, where her family is  from originally, to understand her past and make sense of her life as a part of the Armenian diaspora. Their lives coincide in Istanbul where Asya and her aunts help Armanoush come to terms with her present, and both will realize they have more in common that they thought.

The most interesting part of this book is how Shafak deals with The complexity of the Armenian Genocide.  While reading, I understood why for the Armenian people, specifically in the diaspora, the genocide still feels recent and why they need for these crimes to be recognized in order to start healing. At the same time, why Turks don’t know about this part of their history and don’t feel responsible for these crimes.

The book is ambitious, but I’m not sure it achieves the goal it aims for. Shafak’s writing is witty, and her characters are clever and picturesque. What I enjoyed the most is how she described Istanbul as a living being full of colors and how the aunts represent the many faces of the city: the nationalist-Kemalist, the religious, the Europeanized and the psychotic,  that results from the mixture of it all. However, I thought the depth of the book got lost in the intricates of the plot, too much was happening all the time, too many subtopics and there where many unnecessary characters. I also thought it was a bit too constructed- the book starts with a set of, what seems, unrelated stories until the scenes fit perfectly together, however they don’t fit in naturally and I felt like some elements were forced into the story to make it work-. I expected more from the book, nonetheless I did enjoy it and would definitely read another book by Shafak…I just wish this were a simpler story

About Elif Shafak

Elif Shafak was born in France to diplomat parents, but she grew up in Turkey. She writes both in English and Turkish. Shafak was prosecuted on charges of “insulting Turkishness” for discussing the genocide in the novel. If convicted, she would’ve faced a maximum jail term of three years.

Other books written by Turkish women:

Which book do you recommend? Please let us know in the comment section!

Turkish initiatives and projects that support and empower girls and women

 The Flying Broom Women’s Communication and Research Association

Based in Ankara, Turkey, Flying Broom Women’s Communication and Research Association is a women’s NGO that has mainly three working areas: empowering girls with ending child marriage projects and STEM project; gender-oriented media literacy with programmes like editor training, and; advocating women’s human rights.