Zesty, imaginative.... A Turkish version of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club.

USA Today

The characters in The Bastard of Istanbul are so alive they leap off the page to sit beside you on the couch. What women! This is the rare family saga that understands the value of both modernity and tradition.

Susan Isaacs

A saucy, dranatic and affceting tale in the spirit of novelþs by Amy Tan, Julia Alvarez and Bharati Mukherjeee, should prove irresistible to readers. A grandly emphatic and spellbinding story.

New York Newsday

In a better world, Turkish writer Elif Shafak would get more attention for her zesty, maginative writing and less for the controversy her politics stir up... A lively look at contemporary Istanbul and family through the eyes of two young women, one Turkish and one Armenian American.

Deidre Donahue, USA Today

Beautifully imagined.... it’s as much family history as national history that drives this vital and entertaining novel. And it is the powerful and idiosyncratic characters who drive the family history. And, as you hear in your mind’s ear, it’s Shafak’s vibrant language that drives the characters.

Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune

A deftly spun tale of two families –one Armenian American and the other Turkish – who are burdened by dark secrets and historical tragedies rooted in a common Istanbul past.

Amberin Zaman, The Economist

Shafak’s writing is seductive; each chapter of her novel is named for a food, and the warmth of the Turkish kitchen lies at the center of its wide-ranging plot. The bastard of Istanbul portrays family as more than a function of genetics and fate, folding together history and fiction, the personal and the political into a thing of beauty.

Jennifer Gerson, Elle

Rich and satisfying... a vital reminder of history’s hold on us, of how past can still control the present. Shafak’s prose is rich with telling detail and witty description.

Moira McDonald, The Seattle Times

Shafak possesses as teady hands when it comes to creating strong female characters, and her vivid descriptions of the charms of Istanbul serve to lure the traveler. Shafak’s characters linger in the mind days after finishing the book.

Patricia Corrigan, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Vivid and entertaining. This wonderful new novel carried me away. And reality was different when I returned.

Chicago Tribune

Bold and beautiful... although this book is crowded with characters, its most vivid one is not one of the Kazancý matriarchs but Istanbul itself.

John Freeman, Star Tribune

Mixing humor and tragedy as effortlessly as her two unforgettable families blend and jumble up the many layers of their identity, Elif Shafak offers up quite an exceptional literary feast.

Ariel Dorfman