Book club meeting 13

This month we’re reading The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak 

Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022, The Island of Missing Trees is a rich, magical tale of belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature, and, finally, renewal.

It is set between present-day London and 1974 on the island of Cyprus. Two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided land, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home. The tavern is the only place that Kostas, who is Greek and Christian, and Defne, who is Turkish and Muslim, can meet, in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic, chilli peppers and wild herbs. This is where one can find the best food in town, the best music, the best wine. But there is something else to the place: it makes one forget, even if for just a few hours, the world outside and its immoderate sorrows. In the centre of the tavern, growing through a cavity in the roof, is a fig tree.

We’ll meet for the book club in the shop on Wednesday 25 May @ 7pm – if this sounds up your street, just drop us an email at orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk to come along.