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The Bastard of Istanbul
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Narrated by:
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Alix Dunmore
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By:
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Elif Shafak
About this listen
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Bastard of Istanbul by Edif Shafak.
One rainy afternoon in Istanbul, a woman walks into a doctor's surgery. 'I need to have an abortion', she announces. She is 19 years old and unmarried. What happens that afternoon will change her life.
Twenty years later, Asya Kazanci lives with her extended family in Istanbul. Due to a mysterious family curse, all the Kaznci men die in their early 40s, 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. And when Asya's Armenian American cousin Armanoush comes to stay, long hidden family secrets connected with Turkey's turbulent past begin to emerge.
Orange Prize for Fiction, Long-listed
©2019 Elif Shafak (P)2019 Penguin AudioCritic reviews
"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)
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What listeners say about The Bastard of Istanbul
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Arabian Bee 🐝
- 07-18-21
Really lovely!
I really enjoyed listening to this book. Good story, flows well with beautifully written descriptions. I am definitely a fan of Elif Shafak, and perhaps her translator too. Alix Dunmore did a really good job differentiating each character in the book.
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- Rawan
- 08-17-19
Distracting details
Too many distracting details in an other wise intriguing story. Taught me so much about Armenians and the Ottoman Empire.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Miss S. P. Espinosa
- 10-21-22
Amazing
Such a well written and interesting book, a must read! You won’t be able to put it down!
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-16-23
Paradoxical
It is a paradox to me why I couldn't finish this book. I found the writing too stylised, and the narrating too blurred in the variety of accents. I became irritated with the repeated and high-lighted contradictions in all their forms, in the writing. Great author, good narrator, but not in this book, for me.
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