The Bastard of Istanbul

Name: The Bastard of Istanbul
Rating: 3.9 (72753 reviews)

by Elif Shafak

First published 2006

Amazon

3.9(72,753)

Nineteen-year-old Asya Kazancı lives in Istanbul with a household of forceful aunts and the unanswered question of her father’s identity. In Arizona, Armenian American Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian feels divided between families and travels secretly to Istanbul to understand the homeland from which her ancestors were driven.

Armanoush’s arrival connects the Kazancı women to an Armenian family history rooted in the deportations and killings of 1915. Food, memory and competing national narratives reveal how a concealed act in one generation has shaped the next. The novel moves between contemporary domestic life and the late Ottoman catastrophe that Turkish public culture has often refused to name.