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The Island of Missing Trees
by Elif Shafak
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In 1970s Cyprus, Greek Cypriot Kostas and Turkish Cypriot Defne meet secretly in a Nicosia tavern built around a fig tree. Their relationship crosses communal boundaries at the moment political violence, the 1974 coup and the Turkish invasion divide the island. Separation, disappearance and fear force them to carry the history of the conflict into lives lived elsewhere.
Decades later in London, their daughter Ada struggles with grief and with the silences surrounding her parents’ past. A cutting taken from the tavern’s fig tree becomes both witness and narrator, connecting ecological memory to buried human remains and inherited trauma. The broad Cold War Era context is used because the controlled catalogue contains no dedicated record for the Cyprus conflict, invasion or partition of 1974.
Historical periods
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