From the backlist of Elif Shafak, author of The Architect\'s Apprentice, The Bastard of Istanbul is a tale of an extraordinary family curse and was longlisted for the 2008 Orange Fiction Prize. \'Wonderfully magical, incredible, breathtaking...will have you gasping with disbelief in the last few pages\' Sunday Express \'A beautiful book, the finest I have read about Turkey\' Irish Times \'Heartbreaking...the beauty of Islam pervades Shafak\'s book\' Vogue.
And when Asya\'s Armenian-American cousin Armanoush comes to stay, long hidden family secrets connected with Turkey\'s turbulent past begin to emerge.
Due to a mysterious family curse, all the Kaznci men die in their early forties, so it is a house of women, among them Asya\'s beautiful, rebellious mother Zeliha, who runs a tattoo parlour
Banu, who has newly discovered herself as clairvoyant; and Feride, a hypochondriac obsessed with impending disaster.
Twenty years later, Asya Kazanci lives with her extended family in Istanbul.
What happens that afternoon will change her life.
She is nineteen years old and unmarried. \'I need to have an abortion\', she announces.
One rainy afternoon in Istanbul, a woman walks into a doctor\'s surgery.
From the backlist of Elif Shafak, author of The Architect\'s Apprentice, The Bastard of Istanbul is a tale of an extraordinary family curse and was longlisted for the 2008 Orange Fiction Prize
