A "vivid and entertaining" (Chicago Tribune) tale about the tangled history of two families, from the author of The Forty Rules of Love and The Architect's Apprentice

"Zesty, imaginative . . . a Turkish version of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club." --USA Today

As an Armenian American living in San Francisco, Armanoush feels like part of her identity is missing and that she must make a journey back to the past, to Turkey, in order to start living her life. Asya is a nineteen-year-old woman living in an extended all-female household in Istanbul who loves Jonny Cash and the French existentialists. The Bastard of Istanbul tells the story of their two families--and a secret connection linking them to a violent event in the history of their homeland. Filed with humor and understanding, this exuberant, dramatic novel is about memory and forgetting, about the need to examine the past and the desire to erase it, and about Turkey itself.

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist and a champion of women’s rights and freedom of expression. Her books have been translated into fifty-five languages. Her novels include The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love, The Architect’s Apprentice, Three Daughters of Eve, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, which was a finalist for the 2019 Booker Prize, The Island of Missing Trees, which is a November 2021 Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick, and, most recently, There Are Rivers in the Sky. She is also the author of a memoir, Black Milk: On the Conflicting Demands of Writing, Creativity, and Motherhood. An active political commentator, columnist, and public speaker, she lives in London. Her website is elifshafak.com.