The Bastard of Istanbul

THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL; Elif Shafak; Viking; 2007; Fiction; 368pp.
Elif Shafak's The Bastard of Istanbul is as rich a piece of fiction as I have encountered in recent memory. Asya Kazanci, who has narrowly avoided being aborted in order to live to a cynical young adulthood, lives in Istanbul in a household of "aunties," one of whom is her mother, Zeliha. Having no notion who her father is, she abandons herself to creating a personal code of nihilism, since her life can have no meaning without knowing where she came from. Zeliha's only brother Mustafa has moved to America to avoid the Kazanci curse--no man lives past the age of forty-one. When Mustafa's Armenian stepdaughter goes to Istanbul to confront the Turkish oppressors of her forebears, the two families are reunited in unexpected ways.
Shafak's narrative is redolent of Turkish and Armenian culture, including mouthwatering recipes. Her characters are delightfully rendered: Petite-Ma, the birdlike grandmother whose Alzheimer's occasionally gives way to a startling musicality; the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist whose irreverent drawings of government officials land him in jail; and Auntie Banu, a late-life clairvoyant who is aided in her decision-making by bitter and sweet djinni on either shoulder.
Such a blackly humorous and altogether lovely book!

LW