Bastard of Istanbul - Elif Shafak

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. n n 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. n n 'Wonderfully magical, incredible, breathtaking...will have you gasping with disbelief in the last few pages' Sunday Express n n 'A beautiful book, the finest I have read about Turkey' Irish Times n n 'Heartbreaking...the beauty of Islam pervades Shafak's book' Vogue n