The Island of Missing Trees

I loved every perspective this was written from. It was so thoughtful, beautiful, and emotional. I grew to care for each of the characters; I felt myself mourning with them and understanding them. This book broke my heart, but in the end left me feeling hopeful. Thank you for such a lovely piece of art.

A sweeping story, like A Hundred Years of Solitude, steeping us in history and conflict, sweetened with honesty, drawing the cup to our lips. Drinking deeply the grief of centuries, savoring the freedom acceptance brings, it becomes apparent in an empty cup what is truly is. Alive.

Such a beautiful read. I am sad it’s finished. I feel like I knew every character . I will miss them all .

I loved the history of Cyprus, the informative chapters depicting trees and animals, and the story of immigrants. It wasn’t a book that I couldn’t put down though—it took me a while to motivate to read.

It’s the summer of 1974 and the Turks and Greeks are embroiled in a civil war on the island of Cyprus that turns deadly and bloody. The narrator telling much of the story is a fig tree, a symbol of the intertwined fate of the Greeks and the Turks, and the story is one of love between teenagers on opposite sides. This book has the feel of those Middle Eastern classics like Birds without Wings and The Kite Runner. It’s beautifully written and poignantly told, weaving in history, family, relationships and Turkish and Greek culture on the small island of Cyprus, where I have roots. My grandfather is from Cyprus and I have at least one Cypriot gene! Shafak is Turkish-British, but the Turkish part of her is the big, impressive part of her writing. I first discovered her many years ago when I read her incredible memoir Black Milk. Over the years I’ve read her other novels on Rumi, the Ottoman Empire, as well as feminism. She’s a bold writer, jailed while six months pregnant for “insulting Turkishness” when she wrote about Armenians and Turks in her book The Bastard of Istanbul. With her newest book, The Island of Missing Trees, she goes into other heated territory, the long standing conflict between the Greeks and the Turks on Cyprus. Here, the fig tree does most of the talking. Shafak made a fig tree into a real and compelling character, not easy to do! Cyprus is an island just south of Turkey in the Mediterranean Sea. Sadly, even after this uprising of the 70s, there is still a long demarcation zone, separating the Turks and the Greeks, that runs through the capital city. Cyprus is in fact the last divided country in Europe. Shafak in her last page as an afterthought shows a photo of a cactus that had managed to grow and make its way through from one side of the demarcation fence to the other. That’s her hope for unity, though the book did a wonderful job of that too.🕊💛🧿🇹🇷🇬🇷