From the Back Cover:
Shafak uses the narrative structure of A Thousand and One Nights to construct a story-within-a-story, as the mystery of the apartments' stolen garbage is considered from a variety of perspectives. There is the narrator, a womanizing, raki-swilling academic with a penchant for Kierkegaard; Hygiene Tijen, the 'clean freak', and her lice-ridden daughter Su; madly flamboyant Ethel, a lapsed Jew in search of true love, and the charmingly naive Blue Mistress whose personal secret is just one of many hidden within the confines of the building. Add to this a strange, intensifying stench, the cause of which is revealed at the end of the book, and we have a metaphoric conduit for the cultural and spiritual decay at the heart of Istanbul.
About the Author:
Elif Shafak was born in Strasbourg, France, in 1971. She is an award-winning novelist and the most widely read female writer in Turkey. Critics have acclaimed her as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary literature in both Turkish and English. Her novels include The Bastard of Istanbul which was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her books have been translated into more than thirty languages. She is married with two children, and divides her time between London and Istanbul. Her website is www.elifshafak.com.
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