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The Island of Missing Trees

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A rich, magical new novel from the Booker-shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World. Influenced by the novel’s own intra-diegetic illustrated guide, “How to Bury a Fig Tree” (Shafak 48), I examine the novel under three arboreally titled sections. First, Roots, or How to imagine a tree, considers the challenges of arboreal representation and draws on theories of storied matter to argue that the novel legitimates its primary conceit of the talking tree through narrative voice and intertexts, including Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which supplies an epigraph, and Margaret Cavendish’s “Dialogue between and Oak and a Man Cutting him Down.” These constitute the novel’s generative root system. Second, Branches, or How to know a tree, brings the novel into productive conversation with critical plant studies, examining select scientific and indigenous knowledge of trees in the work of Kimmerer and Suzanne Simard, and vegetal ontologies in the work of Sheldrake and others, to argue that Shafak develops arboreal principles of collaboration and connection across time. These works give epistemological weight to Shafak’s arboreal imaginary. Third, Rings, or How to be responsible to a tree, suggests that the novel’s work of imagining and knowing tree life is deeply ethical, as the narrating tree articulates its rights. By interpreting the novel through arboreal being, knowing, and valuing, interconnecting circles if you will, I argue that Shafak’s novel highlights the urgency of nonanthropocentric modes of storytelling in these times of Anthropogenic climate crisis. I Roots, or How to imagine a tree For Shafak, history is essentially opaque, and politics is what ruins individuals’ lives. If only nationalism and herd mentality, which create an us-versus-them mindset, were to leave individuals alone, none of the atrocities described in the novel would have taken place. But even if we buy into Shafak’s depiction of history as the story of winners, the losers of history, whose plight is taken up by the novel, never come into being as fully fleshed individuals. Nor do they understand (or help us understand) how it was possible that two communities that lived side by side for so long could one day turn around and murder each other. SHAFAK: I wanted an observer that lives longer than human beings, you know? Trees have this, you know, longevity. They were here before us, and they will most probably be here long after we humans have disappeared - but also to think more closely about issues like, what does it mean to be rooted, uprooted and rerooted? So if you're telling the story of immigrants, people have experienced displacement, either within the island or outside. Then to think this through roots and uprootedness was an important not only metaphor but an important emotional attachment for me. The Island of Missing Trees is a masterful work of storytelling. Elif Shafak does a beautiful job tying together the lives of her characters with the history and culture of Cyprus. It's a captivating story that ties together the topics of love, trauma, and resilience. While it can be heartbreaking at times, it also offers hope for an optimistic future.

And it is there that The Island of Missing Trees begins, with Ada, a teenager in London who lives with her father, a biologist, and whose mother has recently died. In their garden, there is a fig tree. Ada, although named after the island, has never actually been to the home of her parents. And then that scream she gives, in the middle of the last history class before Christmas, while being instructed about a school project to interview a relative of a previous generation. Shafak holds a PhD in Political Science from Middle East Technical University in Ankara, and has taught at universities in Turkey, the United States, and the United Kingdom. She is a Fellow and a Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature, and was awarded the medal of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France in 2012. But remembered it is, and not just on the island itself and among the people who live there now, but also among the many Cypriots who left their homes and settled elsewhere, in the hope of starting again.Shafak combines mimicry and metaphor in her Fig Tree character as the tree’s annual rings communicate history and symbolize human immigration. The Fig Tree takes its role as a storyteller very seriously, explaining how it tries “to grasp every story through diverse angles, shifting perspectives, conflicting narratives,” drawing a biological parallel: “Truth is a rhizome—an underground plant stem with lateral shoots. You need to dig deep to reach it and, once unearthed, you have to treat it with respect.” Inhabiting a voice from a different species in an authentic manner is difficult, but the Fig Tree pulls it off with endearing dignity by highlighting collaborative experiences. “Untold stories bring us together,” Shafak writes. “Numbness is destroying our world.” Elif Shafak A second thread of star-crossed love appears, this time between two men who own a tavern where Kostas and Defne meet. There in Nicosia, capital and largest city of Cyprus, Yiorgos and Yusuf built their bistro in 1955, naming the popular gathering spot The Fig Tree after the tall plant growing in the center. Hatred—of both the gay lifestyle and the fact that one man was a Greek Cypriot and the other a Turkish Cypriot—eventually explodes the place with a bomb. The ancient Fig Tree, around for close to a century, reports these events. Shafak has chosen Cyprus rather than, perhaps, the Armenian genocide that continues to haunt her native Turkey. Trauma and intergenerational transfer of memories are of much wider relevance for migrant communities, and for those among whom they seek to rebuild their lives. The Bible speaks of “the sins of the fathers” which will continue to haunt future generations; but perhaps we need to speak also of “the trauma of the mothers” which will be present in the lives of future generations, and which needs to be dealt with. We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. For more details, please consult the latest information provided by Royal Mail's International Incident Bulletin.

What secrets have you held on to? How has keeping a secret made an experience or a relationship better? When has keeping a secret led to a deteriorating relationship? What secrets do you believe need to be kept and what secrets do you think should be shared? Intergenerational Trauma and Inherited Pain The Island of Missing Trees, for all its uses of enchantment, is a complex and powerful work in which the harrowing material settles on the reader delicately * FT * This is a novel, the 12th by the British-Turkish writer Elif Shafak, in which many of the facts are sad — bereavement, violence and unbearable misunderstandings — but the atmosphere is one of great enchantment. Its young lovers unite with “an incredulous laughter, the kind of effervescent lightness that only comes after constant distress and fear”, and much of this spirit pervades the book. INSKEEP: Burial turns out to be a widespread practice. It's even been reported on NPR. People who take fig trees out of the Mediterranean work to preserve them in colder climates.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. Elif Shafak, born in France, is the author of nineteen books (twelve novels) translated into fifty-five languages. She has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize as well as the RSL Ondaatje Prize for 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World. The BBC included The Forty Rules of Love on “100 Novels that Shaped Our World.” I reviewed her novel Three Daughters of Eve for World Literature Today. Ada’s favourite bedtime story from her mother featured soldiers during the second world war who feared for their lives when they saw a cloud of yellow poisonous gas floating towards them, only to realise it was thousands of migrating butterflies. This image of deathly threat dissolving into beauty is characteristic of Shafak’s magical sway.

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