Penguin, £7.99

Honour, By Elif Shafak

 

Arifa Akbar Author Biography

Arifa Akbar

Arifa Akbar is literary editor of The Independent and i newspapers. She has worked at The Independent since 2001 as a news reporter and arts correspondent before joining the books desk in 2009. She was a judge for the Orwell Prize for books 2013, and the Fiction Uncovered Prize 2014.

More articles from this journalist

Friday 01 March 2013

The first chapter of this novel begins with a daughter in mourning, and develops into an intricate story of an honour killing.

We follow three generations of Turkish-Kurds as Shafak weaves her narrative twists, and combines times, places and linguistic inflections with extraordinary dexterity, from 1950s working-class Istanbul to 1970s Hackney and then Shrewsbury prison, 20 years later.

This is a powerful tale of cross-cultural lives, motherhood, male violence and cycles of rage and revenge.

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