Shafak, Elif

"Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna . . . 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"--Publisher.

Jamila and Pembe are twins, born in the 1940s near the border of Turkey and Syria. Jamila grows up to become a midwife, feared and respected for her powers of healing and apparent psychic ability. Pembe follows a different path, marrying Adem and moving to London to raise their children. Adem becomes bitter and frustrated with English life, leaving his elder son Iskender in charge of the household. Pembe begins spending time with another man, and Iskender will have to become a man and learn what it means to love, at any cost.

A novel about two young women and the link between their families. Armanoush is an Armenian American who wants to travel to Turkey and Asya lives in Istanbul while developing interests in Johnny Cash and the French existentialists.

In the fifteenth century, an Indian boy named Jahan brings the sultan of Istanbul a white elephant named Chota as a gift. Jahan becomes Chota's trainer, but quickly proves his aptitude for architecture and is taken as apprentice to Mimar Sinan. Together with Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and other laborers, Jahan begins working on some of the most beautiful buildings of the Ottoman empire--but in the process makes enemies and is caught up in schemes of intrigue and secrecy.

Nineteen-year-old Asya has led a sheltered life with her mother and three aunts in Istanbul, until she meets Armanoush, her brother's stepdaughter, who flies to Istanbul to reconnect with her past and introduces Asya to a new world of possibilities and dangers.

The author recounts her effort to balance her writing career and her parenting responsibilities, describing her battle with postpartum depression, her views on prominent women authors, and the many roles she embraced throughout her journey.