Elif Shafak retells a poignant story of life resembling that of Romeo and Juliet. The narrative reaches its climax when Kostas is sent to London by his mother in 1974 without being able to bid farewell to Defne, and they do not see each other again until many years later.

Elif Shafak is a Turkish novelist who writes in both Turkish and English. Her works have been translated into more than thirty languages, and she is famous for writing "The Forty Rules of Love" in 2010.

Her first novel, "The Sufi," won the Rumi Award for best literary work in Turkey in 1998. Her second novel, "The Gaze," addresses Sufism among Muslims and Jews against a 17th-century Mediterranean backdrop, while her novel "The Gaze" won the Turkish Writers' Union Award in 2000.

Her novel "The Flea Palace" also achieved the highest sales in Turkey, followed by the book "The Tide," in which she discussed issues concerning the status of women and men, gender, mind, and literature.

In 2006, she published "The Bastard of Istanbul" in English, which became a bestseller in Turkey. In this novel, Shafak addresses – among other issues – the Armenian question.