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The Island of Missing Trees

Book cover of The Island of Missing Trees
The Island of Missing TreesElif Şafak

Characters in The Island of Missing Trees

7 characters, main characters first.

Main characters

  • Kostas Kazantzakis

    A Greek Cypriot botanist whose forbidden teenage love with Defne is torn apart by Cyprus's civil war, and who later regrows the fig tree in London.

  • Defne

    A Turkish Cypriot woman, Kostas's forbidden love and Ada's mother, who dies before the novel's present day.

  • Ada Kazantzakis

    Kostas and Defne's teenage daughter, grieving her mother in London and cut off from her family's Cypriot past.

Supporting characters

  • Meryem

    Defne's superstitious older sister, who cuts off contact after Defne marries Kostas and later visits Ada in London.

  • The fig tree

    A fig tree grown from a cutting carried from The Happy Fig in Nicosia to the family's London garden; narrates roughly half the novel.

  • Yiorgos

    Greek co-owner of The Happy Fig tavern in Nicosia, partner to Yusuf.

  • Yusuf (The Island of Missing Trees)

    Turkish Cypriot co-owner of The Happy Fig tavern in Nicosia, partner to Yiorgos.

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