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. One rainy afternoon in Istanbul a woman walks into a doctor's surgery. 'I need to have
an abortion' she announces. She is nineteen 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 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. And when Asya's Armenian-American cousin
Armanoush comes to stay long hidden family secrets connected with Turkey's turbulent past
begin to emerge.
