The Island of Missing Trees Audiobook By Elif Shafak cover art

The Island of Missing Trees

A Novel

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Bloomsbury presents The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak, read by Daphne Kouma and Amira Ghazalla.

A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK
Winner of the 2022 BookTube Silver Medal in Fiction * Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction

"A wise novel of love and grief, roots and branches, displacement and home, faith and belief. Balm for our bruised times." —David Mitchell, author of Utopia Avenue

A rich, magical new novel on belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature and renewal, from the Booker-shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World.

Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns. He is a botanist looking for native species, but really, he’s searching for lost love.

Years later a Ficus carica grows in the back garden of a house in London where Ada Kazantzakis lives. This tree is her only connection to an island she has never visited—- her only connection to her family’s troubled history and her complex identity as she seeks to untangle years of secrets to find her place in the world.

A moving, beautifully written, and delicately constructed story of love, division, transcendence, history, and eco-consciousness, The Island of Missing Trees is Elif Shafak’s best work yet.©2021 Elif Shafak (P)2021 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Fiction Heartfelt Women's Fiction Contemporary Romance Contemporary Romance
Beautiful Storytelling • Rich Historical Context • Rich Multidimensional Characters • Emotional Depth • Interwoven Themes

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What a delight, well read, well written well done. The narrator was fantastic. Happy that I got to experience and will highly recommend.

This story was Magic💗

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It was an enjoyable story about Turkish-Greek couple, their daughter, the fig tree, Cyprus, past and present.

Great story with interesting characters

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I was mainly interested in this book since I know nothing about Cyprus and its history. I wish we went a bit deeper into the history. The character development felt a bit too superficial for me. Almost like a young adult Novel. I wanted to give up the book for the first half. I did appreciate all of the learnings about trees and the ecosystem. In a way I feel like I was inadvertently reading a non fiction book which was cool.

Great performance, took a while to get into the story

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The story intertwines a spiritual consciousness with the reality of today’s challenges and global issues. A must to read and understand through this lens of a journey how might we begin to heal our human selves, our past and our future. Loved it.

Her wholistic view on life and our missing connection to nature

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The story is woven around your typical forbidden love story, but is much richer than at first glance. I enjoyed this fiction because the author had a knowledge of natural history and the story's surprising main characters are entwined in a complete meaningful circle at the end.

exceeds expectations

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