The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

Description

The Island of Missing Trees is a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that allows Elif Shafak to discover the full pail of love and loss, identity and nature within the turbulent historical backdrop of Cyprus. Historical fiction blended with magical realism comes together in this Shafak saga as she uses a fig tree, a symbol and a narrator, a poignant account of how conflict affects both the natural world and mankind.

Summary:
Title and Author: The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak.

Genre/Category: Historical Fiction, Magical Realism, Contemporary Fiction, Literary Fiction.

Plot Summary:

This is the story of Cyprus-a Mediterranean island torn apart by conflict between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. Two star-crossed lovers form the core of this story-the Greek Cypriot Kostas and the Turkish Cypriot Defne-over whose love the ethnic and political tensions of the 1970s battle to lie low.
War and division on the island test the relationship of Mustafa and Sofia, whose love is considered a serious offense. By jumping back and forth between their past in Cyprus and their present day in London, where Kostas lives with their daughter Ada, the novel attempts a kind of official recording that speaks directly to the character.
One central and distinguishing feature of the novel is a fig tree growing in a tavern where Kostas and Defne met in their young days. This fig tree doubles up as a kind of observer, or even partial narrator, through which a link is established between the human world and the natural one, and reflective of the timeless nature of trees and their strength.
Currently, Ada battles her cultural identity and unspoken stories about her parents. As she moves forward, the novel reveals the manner in which historical and traumatic experience go to shape the lives of their offspring.