Three Daughters of Eve

Description

A powerful, sweeping tale of faith, love and friendship set across Istanbul and Oxford

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.

Shirin, Peri and Mona, they were the most unlikely of friends. They were the Sinner, the Believer and the Confused.

Reviews

“A terrific book. Poetic, poignant, trenchant.”― Ian Rankin

“An intelligent, fierce and beguiling read” ― Financial Times

“A thoughtful, charming book that offers a connection to other worlds, perspectives and possibilities” ― Sunday Times

“An intense, discursive and absorbing novel” ― Observer

“One of the most important writers at work today, Elif Shafak eloquently explores Turkey’s tumultuous present and past. Her magnificent latest moves between Istanbul and Oxford in a fascinating exploration of faith and friendship, rich and poor, and the devastating clash of tradition and modernity” ― Independent

“A brilliant and moving novel. Elif Shafak writes about religion without superficiality or special pleading, retaining a sense of its impossible possibility or its possible impossibility. Three Daughters of Eve is a remarkable accomplishment” ― Richard Holloway

“Elif Shafak’s writing leaps off the page. In Three Daughters of Eve she takes us spine-tinglingly right under the skin of three women, exposing the strains of friendship through love and loss. An utterly engrossing read.”― Frances Osborne, bestselling author of The Bolter

“Shafak’s topical 10th novel is both an interrogation and a defence of Muslim identity” ― Rebecca Rose, Financial Times

Author Biography

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist whose work has been translated into 54 languages. The author of 19 books, 12 of which are novels, she is a bestselling author in many countries around the world. Shafak’s latest novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize; longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award; and chosen as Blackwell’s Book of the Year. Her previous novel, The Forty Rules of Love was chosen by the BBC as one of 100 Novels That Shaped Our World. In 2021, Shafak’s The Architect’s Apprentice was chosen for the Duchess of Cornwall’s inaugural book club, The Reading Room.