The Island of Missing Trees

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The great theorizer of the historical novel, György Lukács, writes that the real merit of historical novels is not that they reproduce local customs and language with great accuracy—a task in which The Island of Missing Trees shows considerable investment—but that they dramatize historical forces in such a way that the inevitability of what happened becomes clear. The best historical novels choose their characters so that, even though they are “middle-of-the-road,” ordinary individuals, they can still help us understand how, for instance, feudalism had to make way for capitalism. The story begins in the “late 2010s” with Ada Kazantzakis, a 16-year-old north Londoner. Her mother, Defne, died 11 months earlier, leaving Ada and her father Kostas scalded by loss. Kostas grieves discreetly, consumed by misery in the garden at night, while Ada watches from an upper window.

Identifying dead from conflict around the world is happening every day. As Shafak shares in her interview with Steve Inskeep, the reason that Cypriots are working to find the bones of people who went missing during the ethnic violence is that The Cyprus setting is stunningly described in this spellbinding story about identity, love and loss * Good Houskeeping, best books to read this month * Later the Fig Tree becomes a literal êmigrê itself when Kostas takes a cutting from its remains and puts it in his suitcase as he leaves Cyprus for London, planting it in his garden there. He helps the tree set down roots on a different island as the refugees draw strength from each other—two expatriates unable to forget their shared native homeland. Parts of the narrative here become pure poetry, as the Fig explains why it is “a melancholic tree.” After reading this book, one does gain a new perspective on both the people and nature that surrounds us. The narrative's unique perspective, in part coming from the tree itself, adds a distinctive touch to this book.

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As with the Ovidian intertext, the novel’s Shakespearean epigraph introduces an ecological history that is suggestive of stages in the human-nature relationship, where that relationship is not hierarchical, as in Genesis, and Judeo-Christian creation stories more generally, but instead recognizes the animacy of all living organisms. Todd Borlik notes that in contrast to biblical tradition, “Ovid’s universe is far more dynamic and fluid, in which every creature can mutate into something else” (30). If not mutation, movement is suggested through Macbeth and the witches’ prophecy of a marching forest. To Macbeth himself, it is not only conceivable but verifiable, and supported by the messenger’s conditional, ocular proof, “As I did stand my watch upon the hill, | I looked toward Birnam, and anon methought | The Wood began to move” (5.5.31–33). The play’s lively forest is, significantly, the consequence of felling, with Malcolm’s instruction, “Let every soldier hew him down a bough | And bear ’t before him” (5.4.4–5), announcing both a martial strategy, as the branches provide camouflage, and a deeper, extractive proto-capitalist logic: Malcolm and his men assume the right to take nature for their needs. An animist world is set in opposition to an Anthropocentric one.

The New York Times has archived its articles online. Reporter's Notebook: Politeness and Violence Mix in Cyprus, from the July 30, 1974 issue, shares a perspective of the destruction of the war in July of 1974. This is the time period when Kostas is sent to London, Denfe seeks an abortion and The Happy Fig is bombed. Intergenerational Trauma

The Church Times Archive

Throughout the novel, the human world is dependent on nature to fulfill its history. This finally comes full circle at the end of the novel, when the human and the natural become one. At the very beginning of the story, the fig tree ponders whether it is ever possible for a human to fall romantically in love with a tree. Uncanny as it might sound, the question of a romantic affair between the fig tree and Kostas, the botanist, who is obsessed with the fig, is left hanging throughout the narrative. This is finally answered when the readers get to know that the spirit of Defne transmuted inside the fig after her death. When Meryem conducts a prayer service for the spirit of Defne to reach heaven, Defne chooses to remain “rooted.” Elif Shafak very interestingly spans her novel through an entire season, from the season of “burying a fig tree” to the “unburying of the fig tree,” and in this is reflected the story of a family—Kostas, Defne, and Ada—the story of burying and unburying the past, the story of burdening and unburdening, the story of letting go and holding on. A wonderfully transporting and magical novel that is, at the same time, revelatory about recent history and the natural world and quietly profound' William Boyd Merryn Glover is a novelist and radio dramatist. Her first significant work was a stage play, The Long Way Home, and since then she has written radio plays for Radio 4 and Radio Scotland. She was born in Kathmandu and brought up in Nepal, India, and Pakistan, where her Anglican Australian parents worked as Wycliffe Bible Translators. The author now lives in the Upper Spey Valley, in the Highlands, which provides the setting for Of Stone and Sky, her second novel. ELIF SHAFAK: When I was in Michigan, Ann Arbor, the winters were so cold, and I remember meeting Italian American families who would bury their fig trees if the winters were particularly harsh.