Books from Turkey

Elif Shafak's 2021 novel moves between two islands of memory. In 2010s London, sixteen-year-old Ada Kazantzakis is grieving her mother and estranged from a Cypriot heritage she has never been allowed to know. In 1970s Cyprus, her parents-to-be, Kostas and Defne — he Greek Christian, she Turkish Muslim — fall in love in secret, meeting at a tavern called The Happy Fig as their island slides toward war and partition. Woven through both timelines is a third, unexpected narrator: a fig tree, carried as a cutting from Cyprus to a London garden, which watches over the family and remembers everything the humans cannot bear to say. Through its eyes, Shafak braids together buried history, ecological wonder, and the long aftershocks of a divided homeland. Tender and elegiac, The Island of Missing Trees is a novel about inherited silence and inherited love — about how the traumas of one generation take root in the next, and about the fragile work of belonging to a place, a family, and a past. A Reese's Book Club pick and Costa Award finalist, it is among Shafak's most beloved books.

• forbidden love
• dual timeline
• multiple povs

Ella, a woman in her forties living a comfortable but uninspired life, takes on a job as a reader. She discovers a manuscript detailing the 12th-century encounter between the poet Rûmi and a renowned Muslim dervish. This ancient story sparks a profound spiritual awakening in Ella, leading her to explore Sufism and the true meaning of love.

• dual timeline

A withdrawn Turkish clerk's hidden notebook reveals the great love of his youth: an all-consuming, unconventional romance with an independent German painter in 1920s Berlin. Sabahattin Ali's 1943 classic is a quietly devastating study of love, longing, and passivity.

In 1591 Istanbul, a master illuminator is murdered, and his nephew Enishte is tasked with finding the killer. He enlists the help of a reclusive artist, who may be involved in the crime. As Enishte delves deeper, he uncovers a conspiracy involving forbidden love, political intrigue, and the clash between Eastern and Western art.

• multiple povs

Why do some nations flourish while others falter? Acemoglu and Robinson argue that the key lies not in geography or culture, but in the political and economic institutions societies establish. Through historical examples spanning from ancient Rome to modern Korea, they demonstrate how these institutions dictate a nation's path to prosperity or poverty, offering crucial insights into today's global landscape.

A poet returns to the Turkish city of Kars to investigate a series of suicides among young women. Amidst falling snow and growing suspicion, he reconnects with a former love and finds himself entangled with dangerous figures. This novel explores political intrigue, philosophy, and the clash between secularism and religious fundamentalism.

A journalist's disappearance in Çorum sends readers on an Anatolian search entangled with Hittite ruins and old legends.

• quest
• mystery box

Yusuf, a young man, is taken in by the district governor after his family is tragically murdered. He falls deeply in love with the governor's daughter, Muazzez, leading to a passionate but ultimately doomed relationship. Their love story unfolds against a backdrop of societal pressures and the harsh realities of rural Turkish life, revealing the destructive power of jealousy and injustice.

• fish out of water
• forbidden love

Fazil, a young student grieving his father, finds himself in a boarding house filled with unforgettable characters. While working as an extra on a TV show, he meets the captivating Madame Hayat, a woman who ignites a passionate, life-altering romance. This story explores the complexities of love and the yearning for freedom in a restrictive environment.

• coming of age

A modern-times novel of a young architect looking back on love, family, and environmental disillusionment in late-20th-century Istanbul.

"A resilient Turkish writer's inspiring account of his imprisonment that provides crucial insight into political censorship amidst the global rise of authoritarianism. The destiny I put down in my novel has become mine. I am now under arrest like the hero I created years ago. I await the decision that will determine my future, just as he awaited his. I am unaware of my destiny, which has perhaps already been decided, just as he was unaware of his. I suffer the pathetic torment of profound helplessness, just as he did. Like a cursed oracle, I foresaw my future years ago not knowing that it was my own. Confined in a cell four meters long, imprisoned on absurd, Kafkaesque charges, novelist Ahmet Altan is one of many writers persecuted by Recep Tayyip Erdogan's oppressive regime. In this extraordinary memoir, written from his prison cell, Altan reflects upon his sentence, on a life whittled down to a courtyard covered by bars, and on the hope and solace a writer's mind can provide, even in the darkest places"--