Torn between east and west, between democracy and authoritarianism, between secularism and Islam, turkey stands at the crossroads of our world. One side lies Europe, a continent of order, peace and prosperity. On the other lies the Middle East, a region of chaos, violence and poverty. How can one nation of 80,000,000 people, forged from the wreckage of the bloody first world war, maintain its cohesion in the face of such lacerating disharmony? Though The Bastard of Istanbul primarily concerns itself with the trials and tribulations of an extended, bifurcated, Turkish family, with branches in Istanbul and the southwestern United States, Ms. Shafak's characters are a delivery system for deeper messages about women, nationalism, freedom and Turkey.
For 19-year-old Asya, life is a series of disappointments and restrictions which, together, have kindled in her twin fires of rage and nihilism. The eponymous bastard, Asya was born, out of wedlock, into a family of difficult women, three aunts, two grandparents and one mother, all of whom, at one point or another, live under the same roof.
This clan of females suffers a curse, chiefly that their menfolk never seem to be able to survive into middle age. The only male who has defied this curse is Mustafa, Asya's uncle, and he may have only been spared by fleeing Istanbul for America where, for the last 20 years, he he's lived with an excitable American woman who came to him a single mother with a half-Armenian daughter. Years on, the daughter Armanoush, or Amy to her American friends, is a bright, articulate and bookish college student who, finding herself gripped by a desire to explore her Armenian roots, secretly travels to Istanbul where, as the step daughter of Mustafa, she is welcomed under the roof of Asya's wild family of women.
It would be difficult for scholarly Armanoush and hedonistic Asya to have less in common, and yet, as Armanoush begins to delve into her Armenian family's tortured history, the two youths bond tightly. Asya has her cynical eyes opened to the Armenian genocide which Turkish society has tried to sweep under the proverbial rug, and Armanoush learns, through her associations with Asya's free-spirited circle, that, counter to the expectations of her anti-Turkish Armenian friends, Turkey and its people, while reluctant to admit the sins of the past, are not hate-filled warmongers. They are people, good and bad, living their lives. And in this, they are no different than anyone else the world over.
The story crescendos when, learning that Armanoush has lied to them about her journey to turkey, Rose and Mustafa hurry across the globe to Istanbul to retrieve her, a fateful decision which will have profound consequences to both branches of this eccentric family.
Though The Bastard of Istanbul opens slowly, indolently laying out its myriad players and their assorted troubles, it rapidly acquires a powerful momentum that impels it to a shattering conclusion. Ms. Shafak's characters shine. Everyone from thoughtful Armanoush and nihilistic Asya to their thorny and zealous relatives have distinct and difficult personalities. But while her living, breathing characters give her work its color, they are also the doorways through which she can explore the challenging questions of Turkish society.
Asya embodies liberal, secularist turkey. Frustrated and angry, she flails to find her roots in a world that is, often, hostile to her existence. Armanoush, meanwhile, represents that part of the Armenian Diaspora that wishes rapprochement with Turkey, an acknowledgement of and a settlement to the butchery of 1915. It's no surprise, then, that both women face such insurmountable lives. After all, the tide is against them, not only in Turkey but in much of the rest of the world which seems increasingly unwilling to enjoin with its enemies on peaceful, common ground.
The Bastard of Istanbul is slow to ignite, but its launch, when actualized around the halfway mark, is spectacular and engrossing. I could have done without Ms. Shafak's occasional digressions into religious mysticism which felt shoehorned into the story to help clue the reader into its central plot point, but the rich history and the vivid world more than made up for this flaw. (4/5 Stars)
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