Set within a once-stately apartment block in the heart of Istanbul, this novel telles the story of Bonbon Palace, built by a Russian emigre for his wife at the end of the Tsarist regime. The building is now sadly dilapidated, flea-infested and home to ten very different individuals and families.
Shafak uses the narrative structure of A thosanda and One Nights to construct a story-within-a-story.
Some of the inhabitants of the building include Ethel, a lapsed Jew in search of true love and the sad and beautiful Blue Mistress whose personal secret is just one of many hidden within the confines of the building.
If you love Istanbul or want to know more about the city this novel will speak to your heart.
The Flea Palace extract in The Guardian. Click here.
Her literary sucess and journalism mark her out as a figurehead of a next generation of writers, who use literature to reconfigure Turkish identity, and its relatonship to the country's history.
- The Independent
Shafak can switch from a picareque tale of a father and son's broken noses to astute observations of how strangely despair and love manifest themselves without pausing.
- The Guardian
A cast of wacky flat-dwellers lends it punch and pizazz.
-The Independent
