de Elif Shafak
The stunning, timely new novel from the acclaimed, internationally bestselling author of The Architect's Apprentice and The Bastard of Istanbul.
Peri, a married, wealthy, beautiful Turkish woman, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground—an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor. A relic from a past—and a love—Peri had tried desperately to forget.
Three Daughters of Eve is set over an evening in contemporary Istanbul, as Peri arrives at the party and navigates the tensions that simmer in this crossroads country between East and West, religious and secular, rich and poor. Over the course of the dinner, and amidst an opulence that is surely ill-begotten, terrorist attacks occur across the city. Competing in Peri's mind however are the memories invoked by her almost-lost polaroid, of the time years earlier when she was sent abroad for the first time, to attend Oxford University. As a young woman there, she had become friends with the charming, adventurous Shirin, a fully assimilated Iranian girl, and Mona, a devout Egyptian-American. Their arguments about Islam and feminism find focus in the charismatic but controversial Professor Azur, who teaches divinity, but in unorthodox ways. As the terrorist attacks come ever closer, Peri is moved to recall the scandal that tore them all apart.
Elif Shafak is the number one bestselling novelist in her native Turkey, and her work is translated and celebrated around the world. In Three Daughters of Eve, she has given us a rich and moving story that humanizes and personalizes one of the most profound sea changes of the modern world.
The stunning, timely new novel from the acclaimed, internationally bestselling author of The Architect's Apprentice and The Bastard of Istanbul.
Peri, a married, wealthy, beautiful Turkish woman, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground—an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor. A relic from a past—and a love—Peri had tried desperately to forget.
Three Daughters of Eve is set over an evening in contemporary Istanbul, as Peri arrives at the party and navigates the tensions that simmer in this crossroads country between East and West, religious and secular, rich and poor. Over the course of the dinner, and amidst an opulence that is surely ill-begotten, terrorist attacks occur across the city. Competing in Peri's mind however are the memories invoked by her almost-lost polaroid, of the time years earlier when she was sent abroad for the first time, to attend Oxford University. As a young woman there, she had become friends with the charming, adventurous Shirin, a fully assimilated Iranian girl, and Mona, a devout Egyptian-American. Their arguments about Islam and feminism find focus in the charismatic but controversial Professor Azur, who teaches divinity, but in unorthodox ways. As the terrorist attacks come ever closer, Peri is moved to recall the scandal that tore them all apart.
Elif Shafak is the number one bestselling novelist in her native Turkey, and her work is translated and celebrated around the world. In Three Daughters of Eve, she has given us a rich and moving story that humanizes and personalizes one of the most profound sea changes of the modern world.
Critiques-
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October 2, 2017
Shafak’s ambitious novel (after The Architect’s Apprentice) follows Peri Nalbantoglu, namely her memories of childhood and a scandal in which she was involved long ago at Oxford. On her way to a dinner party in the present, Peri has a violent encounter with a vagrant on the streets in Istanbul. She escapes, but when a photograph of her with her two university friends, Shirin and Mona, falls out of her purse during the struggle, it leads her to reminisce. She thinks back to her days at Oxford when she met Shirin, a vivacious, popular student. Peri decided to take a class with Shirin’s beloved mentor, professor Anthony Azur, who teaches a seminar about God. Azur inspires love, hate, and obsession among his students and colleagues, and Peri soon falls for him, eventually causing a rift between her and her friends. The novel’s debate on the nature of God presents opposing viewpoints through the various characters: Shirin, like Peri’s father, becomes an atheist, while Peri’s roommate Mona brandishes a different kind of feminist-tinged Muslim devotion than Peri’s zealous mother, and various students at the seminar voice their opinions along with Azur. Pronouncements from newly awakened college kids in Azur’s class sometimes tip into tedium. Events jarringly come out of left field as current-day Peri tries to reconcile with Shirin and Azur, and the narrative itself ends abruptly. But readers interested in debates about the nature of God will find the book intriguing. -
September 15, 2017
Through the story of a cosmopolitan, upper-middle-class Turkish woman coming to terms with her life, Shafak (The Architect's Apprentice, 2015, etc.) meshes many of the themes she has explored separately in her previous novels: Turkish politics, spiritualism, and the uneasy relationship between East and West.In 2016 Istanbul, 35-year-old Peri is en route with her surly 12-year-old daughter to a dinner party when a beggar tries to rob her. As Peri successfully fights off her attacker (possibly with help from a guardian angel), an old photograph falls from her purse, a forgotten Polaroid of Peri standing with three others at Oxford. That photograph continues to tug at her memories when she eventually arrives at the dinner party, a party that may remind film aficionados of Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel. As course after course is served in the ostentatiously beautiful home, Peri observes her well-heeled fellow guests while she reconsiders her past. She spent an unhappy childhood caught in the cross hairs between her protective, devout mother and her heavy-drinking but adored secularist father, an Ataturk devotee. Unable to decide what she believed, bookworm Peri searched for a path between belief and disbelief. Supported by her father, she attended Oxford in 2000; her intellectual, spiritual, and emotional lives there centered on the others in that photograph: Egyptian-American Mona, a Muslim feminist who wore her headscarf as a choice; Shirin, an aggressively secular, joyful Iranian; and professor Azur, whose controversial course, "Entering the Mind of God/God of the Mind," had a profound effect on all his students and especially inspired but confused Peri. In 2016, listening to self-absorbed dinner-party chatter expressing a cross-section of Turkish attitudes about nationalism, capitalism, and Islam, Peri decides to face the act of betrayal she committed at Oxford before it's too late. Shafak's infectious, earnest exuberance is used here to better effect than it has been recently; her portrait of a woman in existential crisis feels universal, shining clarifying light on Islam--and religious spirituality in general--within the frame of today's world.COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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October 1, 2017
When Nazperi Nalbantoglu, called Peri, travels to Oxford from Istanbul to attend school in 2000, she carries the weight of her father's expectations. Mensur is determined that his only daughter will become a forward-thinking idealist. Torn between her strictly observant mother, Selma, and her more progressive father, Peri is unsure about religion. It is with this baggage that she meets the other two daughters of Eve: Shirin, a British woman of Iranian descent, and Mona, an observant Muslim of Egyptian ancestry. Peri is also worryingly drawn to Professor Azur, who challenges her assumptions about God and religion. Renowned Turkish writer Shafak (Honor, 2013) switches back and forth between Peri's Oxford days and her life in 2016 Istanbul, as a fine modern Muslim. A thinly veiled meditation on the complexities of religion, this tale wears its agenda overtly, while the characters often come across as caricatures, each a stand-in for a certain point of view. Despite a bit of heavy-handedness here, Shafak is a brilliant chronicler of the ills that plague contemporary society and once again proves her mettle.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.) -
November 1, 2017
Three Muslim women, Shirin, Mona, and Peri, meet in a philosophy class at Oxford University and end up sharing a home and a desire to investigate their divergent perspectives on God and Islam. Though Mona and Shirin are proudly opinionated, the focus is on Peri, the more nuanced thinker. A sensitive child, aware of the rift between her secular father and devout mother, she has always grappled with the nature of God. Her quest for understanding leads from Turkey to England and to controversial Professor Azur, known for eschewing the rules and promising to rid his students of the "malady of certainty." The charismatic Azur delights in pitting students against one another, challenging their core beliefs, and forcing a calamitous reaction that reverberates for years. A decade later, Peri is back in Istanbul, a wife and mother still uncertain and burdened with the memory of a time she failed to stand up for her convictions. VERDICT Nominated for the Orange and Baileys Prizes and IPAC Dublin Literary Award, Turkish author Shafak uses rich, thought-provoking prose to illuminate women's struggles and fuse Islam with feminist theory. Like her compatriot Orhan Pamuk, Shafak illustrates the ongoing fissure between Eastern and Western culture in Turkey. [See Prepub Alert, 6/26/17.]--Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- Washington Post Elif Shafak's new novel reveals such a timely confluence of today's issues that it seems almost clairvoyant . . . There are novels you want to cherish in the sanctity of your own adoration, and then there are novels you feel impatient to talk about with others. Press Three Daughters of Eve on a friend or your book club for a great conversation about this flammable era we live in now.
- Marie Claire A beautifully rendered tale of homeland and faith.
- The Millions, "Most Anticipated" Safak is one of Turkey's most popular novelists, and her fiction and nonfiction has been translated around the world. Three Daughters of Eve, her 10th novel, takes place in contemporary Istanbul, but looks back on an earlier era, as Peri, a wealthy housewife, recalls her friendship with two fellow students at Oxford University. Together, these three young women became close through their studies, debating the role of women in Islam, and falling under the influence of a charismatic but controversial professor. The scandal that broke them apart still haunts Peri.
- Harpers Bazaar Rich and complex . . . Shafak explores themes of femininity and spirituality and extremism and political oppression in a way that feels thoughtful and refreshing.
- Financial Times, "Best Books of 2017" This is a truly modern novel—about the way we are shaped by politics, including freedom of expression and political repression, but also by our personal relationships.
- San Diego Magazine, "5 Books to Read in December" From Turkish writer Elif Shafak, Three Daughters of Eve follows a wealthy woman in Istanbul whose university friendships become touchstones as she navigates politics of Islam and feminism.
- New York Journal of Books Shafaq has masterfully created equally lush portraits of warm and complicated Istanbul and cold and collected Oxford. . . . Three Daughters of Eve is a marvelous lesson in multiculturalist angst, the clash between modernity and tradition, and the vicissitudes of personal struggle. A must-read that entertains and informs without preaching.
- Kirkus Reviews [Shafak's] portrait of a woman in existential crisis feels universal, shining clarifying light on Islam—and religious spirituality in general—within the frame of today's world.
- Publishers Weekly Readers interested in debates about the nature of God will find the book intriguing.
- Shelf Awareness Shafak deftly captures Peri's struggles with faith, her attempts to please the people she loves and her ongoing attempts at the art of feigning happiness.
- Library Journal Turkish author Shafak uses rich, thought-provoking prose to illuminate women's struggles and fuse Islam with feminist theory. Like her compatriot Orhan Pamuk, Shafak illustrates the ongoing fissure between Eastern and Western culture in Turkey.
- The Seattle Times Timely, fascinating. . . Three Daughters of Eve slowly teases out the defining moments in the life of its Muslim protagonist.
