Why a Booktrail?
1980s, 2016: East and West and a mix of two worlds and historical corners inbetween
Three Daughters of Eve
What you need to know before your trail
Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground – an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor. A relic from a past – and a love – Peri had tried desperately to forget.
The photograph takes Peri back to Oxford University, as an eighteen year old sent abroad for the first time. To her dazzling, rebellious Professor and his life-changing course on God. To her home with her two best friends, Shirin and Mona, and their arguments about Islam and femininity. And finally, to the scandal that tore them all apart
Travel Guide
Istanbul
Sultan’s Palace/ Beylerbeyi Sarayı
A very symbolic sight in the city which has seen many an historical event
In its stormy history the mansion had seen heroes rise and fall, empires soar and collapse, maps expand and shrink , dreams turn into fine dust. But never before had it been rammed by a ship”
“It was on this balcony that Kaiser Wilhelm II had had tea with a pasha known for the scale of his ambitions…..it was also on this historic balcony that a young Turkish heir, besotted with a White russian Dancer who had escaped to Istanbul after the Bolshevik REvolution..had put a pistol to his head and shot himself”
The city in the modern day is also very well evoked – from the traffic noise, to the border it straddles between East and West, modernity versus more traditional themes. This is the landscape of contradictions and Elif evokes it with images rich in vivid colour:
The entire city was one giant construction site. Istanbul had grown uncontrollably and kept on expanding – a bloated goldfish, unaware to having gobble more than it could digest” The author describes the country as being someone who had put one foot into Europe and was trying to wriggle and squirm its way through the rest of the doorway but at the same time, Europe was pushing the door shut. Such an apt description for a country on the crossroads and one where the story of Peri and her life here, separated by that time spent in Oxford is a great illustration of cultures, faith and one woman’s struggle to make sense of the world around her.
Oxford
The spires and the educational history of Oxford have a remarkable effect on the young and impressionable Peri. This is a woman who hasn’t seen any of the world and as her first visit to a far and distant land, it proves to be quite the eye opener. Oxford represents freedom as well as a chance to travel and open her mind. This is also where the starts to question and analyse her faith and place in the world. She gets to visit the amazing underground bookshelves of The Bod – ie the Bodleian Library and finds it fascinating that some of the books are chained to the shelves as in medieval times. She has been told by a boyfriend that her reading list is too European but she thinks that his is too imperial. The Contrast between reading lists illustrates the differences between them and between men and women in general it would seem. As in the difference between Oxford and Istanbul at that time.
“Students are like milkshakes for they come in different flavours” Some protest, some campaign, some save rainforests rather than studying….once again Peri’s world opens up even more..
Streetview Maps
A) Turkey - Istanbul - The Sultan's Palace
D) England - Oxford - Bodleian Library
Booktrailer Review
Clare: @thebooktrailer
Peri, a middle-class woman in Istanbul is on her way to a dinner party starts the story of Istanbul and Oxford. how her life as well as these two places are a mass of contradictions and how she like the two cities she’s lived in is a mix of East and West, religion and modernity and history and the future.
Her life is told in flashbacks to Oxford in the 1980s where her view and expectations of Oxford are eye opening. This shy girl really came into her own and discovered much of a world she never really knew existed apart from in her books (nothing wrong with that I thought) Her relations with two fellow students and the male professor is where things start to go wrong and her road in life goes down another path altogether. This man seems to be a modern day pariah – and students are drawn to him which I admit to finding a bit strange and uncomfortable at times.
Where the novel did shine was the mix of East and West and an Turkish woman trying to make sense of the world around her, questioning her time in Oxford and all that has happened since. The food and meals described were lush and very tasty and helped to capture the colour of Turkey as did the historical asides and the odd note at the bottom of the page about a food or cultural nuance.
Elif Shafak has written some interesting novels now which have always left me with something to think about and has left me with a taste of her country and culture.
From Oxford to Istanbul this novel really captures two worlds, two cultures and the mix of contradictions between them
Where Next?
