The Island of Missing Trees

Author: ​Elif Shafak
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
Elif Shafak has a magical use of words.  She conjures indelible pictures, she dissects issues with a rare  imagination, realism and poignancy that one is left reeling from the impact of her words - a longing for more. Champion of the displaced, the disenfranchised, the unloved and the environment, Shafak is a compassionate writer whose writing will move and inform you. ‘The Island of Missing Trees’ is a beautifully crafted novel which has, at its 

heart, a fig tree.  In fact the tree is the narrator. You might think that strange but it works. A metaphor for the environment; reminding us that our roots and branches spread beyond the place of birth and that all things that grow are living.
Shafak’s writing is variously described as luminous, masterful and I can only echo these descriptions. She tells this story with such heart and brings the issue of identity, trauma and love across cultures into such focus that we are forced to look at our own lives, our own intolerances.
 Cyprus in 1974 is on the verge of civil war, a divided island but for teenagers , Greek Christian Kostas and Turkish Muslim Defne,  love has bloomed and is all consuming. They meet in the local tavern ‘The Happy Fig’ where a fig tree spreads its branches through the roof offering shade and seclusion.  It is the one constant, observing, growing, protecting - witness to the developing affair, to the horrors of the war, the crumbling of the city, the disappearance of the gay owners of the tavern, the separation of the lovers.  
London 2010s. Kostas is a scientist specialising in trees and his daughter Ada is a troubled teenager. Her mother is dead and she is struggling to find herself. She knows little of her parent’s country of birth, or their history. This is never talked about and for Ada, stranded on that island between child and adult, the only constant is her father’s love and the fig tree Ficus Carica in the garden. Not a native of England but brought from Cyprus and knowing the history of this family. As Kostas prepares to bury the tree for winter, aunt Meryem, whom Ada has never met, arrives from Cyprus. Memories are stirred, longings and loss are brought to the surface and at the centre of it - a fig tree.  
As the narrator tells us that all trees are essential ‘You might say there is a tree for every mood and moment’ it is a reminder that every living thing has a purpose…’ to reminisce about the past, seek out a holly to sit under...then again if it’s love you are after, or love you have lost, come to the fig, always the fig’.  
Shafak’s inimitable style brings us once again a simply beautiful and emotional read. ​