The Flea Palace: A moving historical fiction about neighbours in the same building and the thrilling mystery they uncover - Softcover

Shafak, Elif

Softcover

ISBN 10: 024120190X ISBN 13: 9780241201909

Publisher: Penguin, 2015

Synopsis

Shortlisted for the 2005 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, Elif Shafak's The Flea Palace is a moving and highly original novel about a group of individuals who live in the same building and who together become embroiled in a mystery.

By turns comic and tragic, The Flea Palace is an outstandingly original novel driven by an overriding sense of social justice.

Bonbon Palace was once a stately apartment block in Istanbul. Now it is a sadly dilapidated home to ten wildly different individuals and their families.

There's a womanizing, hard-drinking academic with a penchant for philosophy; a 'clean freak' and her lice-ridden daughter; a lapsed Jew in search of true love; and a charmingly naïve mistress whose shadowy past lurks in the building. When the rubbish at Bonbon Palace is stolen, a mysterious sequence of events unfolds that result in a soul-searching quest for truth.

'Picaresque' Guardian

'Hyperactive and hilarious' Independent

About this title

Review

Shafak can switch from a picareque tale of a father and son's broken noses to astute observations of how strangely depair and love manifest themselves without pausing. --The Guardian

A cast of wacky flat-dwellers lends it punch and pizazz --The Independent

Shafak is well set to challenge Mr Pamuk as Turkey's foremost contemporary novelist' --The Economist

About the Author

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist and the most widely read female author in Turkey. She writes in both Turkish and English, and has published seventeen books, eleven of which are novels. Her work has been translated into fifty languages. Shafak holds a PhD in political science and she has taught at various universities in Turkey, the US and the UK, including St Anne's College, Oxford University, where she is an honorary fellow. She is a member of World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Creative Economy and a founding member of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). An advocate for women's rights, LGBT rights and freedom of speech, Shafak is an inspiring public speaker and twice a TED global speaker, each time receiving a standing ovation. Shafak contributes to many major publications around the world and she has been awarded the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. In 2017 she was chosen by Politico as one of the twelve people who would make the world better. She has judged numerous literary prizes and is chairing the Wellcome Prize 2019. Find out more about Elif Shafak on her website: www.elifshafak.com

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 024120190X
• ISBN 13: 9780241201909
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448