A Trip to Turkey

A friend recently recommended Elif Shafak's The Bastard of Istanbul.  Shafak is one of the most outspoken and acclaimed Turkish female writers.  This novel focuses on the women in an Armenian American family and in a Turkish family.  While the novel deals with very serious subject matter (for which the author may have landed herself in prison in Turkey though the charges were eventually dismissed), it also is filled with wacky characters and a good dose of wit and humor.  Spanning topics from genocide, repression, tattoos, and Johnny Cash, this book weaves together both Western and Eastern storytelling and characters, and made for a very illuminating and fascinating read, and exposed me to a slice of history I knew nothing about prior to picking up this book.  I definitely look forward to reading Shafak's other novels.