The Island of Missing Trees

The Island of Missing Trees – Elif Shafak

In 1974, on the island of Cyprus, two teenagers from opposite sides of a bitter divide fall in love. Kostas is Greek Cypriot and Christian; Defne is Turkish Cypriot and Muslim. They meet in secret at a tavern in Nicosia, where a fig tree grows through the roof, witnessing their love as war tears the island apart.

The Island of Missing Trees, by acclaimed Turkish-British novelist Elif Shafak, moves between the Cyprus of the 1970s and London decades later. There, a teenage girl named Ada, the daughter of Kostas and Defne, struggles with grief after her mother’s death. She knows almost nothing about her parents’ past or the island they came from, and her father has never spoken about it. When a relative arrives from Cyprus, long-buried secrets begin to surface.

One of the novel’s most unusual and memorable narrators is a fig tree, which grew in the tavern in Nicosia and now stands in the family’s garden in London, having been brought from Cyprus as a cutting. Through the tree’s perspective, Shafak explores memory, belonging, nature and the ways in which trauma is passed down through generations.

The novel weaves together a love story, a family saga and a meditation on history, identity, migration and the natural world, offering a moving portrait of a divided island and the people shaped by its conflict.

Lyrical and moving, The Island of Missing Trees is a rewarding read for fans of literary fiction and stories about love, family and history. It deals with war, loss and grief.