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The Bastard of Istanbul

Elif Shafak’s Bastard of Istanbul is a gentle book.  It does not harry us with rushed ideas.  It dips us gently into quiet realisations. The life of a family, principally three sisters and their mother.  It shows a city,   Istanbul, littered with sublime and beautiful things. Fragile things, surrounded by shite and detritus.  The glass teacups, Zalahi has a grá for.  These things always break, being too delicate for this world.  Yet Zalahi doesn’t break, she grows out of the shite of this world to emerge bloody but unbowed.  


The Bastard is claustrophobic, the closeness of others bears down upon each of the characters.  This is juxtaposed by the literal and figurative distance between characters.  The physical proximity of the sisters is contrasted with the chasm of unspoken truths between them.  ‘People stuck to one another to disguise their loneliness, pretending to be far more intimate than they actually were.‘.  Gaps between people so close together and yet forced apart by their histories, by their identities, and the taboos and strictures of an oppressive society and of course by their own unspeakable sins. 


The Bastard shows us that an oppressive society isn’t oppressive on some abstract level.  It isn’t a thing out there. It reaches down into the daily lives and perverts every conversation. It obstructs sincere contact.  Zalahi reflects, ‘ Why can't I share a cigarette and a few friendly words with this man?’  The millstone of convention is placed around Zalahi neck and she must carry this into the most mundane of human interaction, like getting a light for a fag.   It is an oppression which reaches into private lives and robs them of their authenticity.  This is the oppression that the Bastard shows so clearly. 


Elif’s characters are made endearing by the inclusion of their foibles.  Impulse buys in a supermarket, loyalty to a particular brand of tissues. If details are the soul of narrative, then these details render three-dimensional characters. 


The threads which connect families, cultures and places are strong themes here too.  The touches and tidy gestures, that show daily care and consideration for one another. The peeled orange left for the returning daughter. 


The Bastard challenges the naive insistence on the difference between nationalities and ethnicities. Showing these vanities of small difference for the idiocy they are.


Almost unbelievable, Elif Shafak was put on trial for 'denigrating Turkishness' following the publication of the book.  Fortunately she was not convicted.  The Bastard exalts the beauty of Turkish, Armenian and human lives.  

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