The Island of Missing Trees

An intergenerational story about family, war, loss, and love. In 1974 Cyprus, a Christian Greek boy and a Muslim Turkish girl fall in love despite it being forbidden. In 2010s London we learn how the past affected the family today…and every other chapter is narrated by the fig tree that saw everything happen. Shafak said her reason for making a tree a character and giving the tree an actual voice is that she wanted a character who stood outside of time, who was there before the humans and would be there after. Literary fiction is often weird and creative and can be all the more powerful for it.