Island of Lost Trees

Elif Shafak

Two teenage girls, one Greek Cypriot and the other Turkish Cypriot, meet in a bar on the island they call home. The Bar: In 1974, on the island of Cyprus, two teenagers from opposite sides of a divided land meet in a bar in the city they call home. The bar is the only place where Costas, a Greek Christian, and Defne, a Turkish Muslim, can meet in secret, hidden under the blackened rafters from which dangle garlands of garlic, chili peppers, and wild herbs. Here one can find the best food in town, the best music, and the best wine. But there is something else about this place: it makes you forget, if only for a few hours, the outside world and its excessive sorrows. In the center of the bar, growing through a cavity in the ceiling, is a fig tree. This tree will witness their quiet, happy meetings and their silent, secret departures; it will be there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to rubble, and when the teenagers disappear and separate. After decades in North London, sixteen-year-old Ada Kazantzakis has never visited the island where her parents were born. In her desperate search for answers, she seeks to unravel years of secrets, separation, and silence. The only link that connects her to her ancestral land is a Ficus carica tree growing in their back garden. In *The Island of Lost Trees*, award-winning author Elif Shafak delivers a rich and enchanting story of belonging and identity, love and trauma, memory and amnesia, the destruction of nature by man, and, ultimately, regeneration.