The Bastard of Istanbul

· Penguin · Narrated by Alix Dunmore
4.4
8 reviews
Audiobook
11 hr 4 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Bastard of Istanbul written by Elif Shafak, read by Alix Dunmore.

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.

'Wonderfully magical, incredible, breathtaking...will have you gasping with disbelief in the last few pages' Sunday Express

'A beautiful book, the finest I have read about Turkey' Irish Times

'Heartbreaking...the beauty of Islam pervades Shafak's book' Vogue

Ratings and reviews

4.4
8 reviews
Naila Chaudhary
January 6, 2024
book is very nice ,but the voice was not good , it seems too fast , only because of voice I didn't enjoyed this great book.
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Anil Das
December 16, 2020
AAA
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About the author

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish novelist, whose work has been translated into fifty-six languages. The author of nineteen books, twelve of which are novels, she is a bestselling author in many countries around the world. Shafak's last novel, The Island of Missing Trees, was a top ten Sunday Times bestseller, and was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. There Are Rivers in the Sky is her latest novel.

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