Are we the end product of our familial history or the beginning of something new?

Armanush has no doubt that only the first assumption can be true, Asya doesn't really care, but if she were forced to have a standpoint, she'd opt for the latter. Why should she care for past generations if she doesn't even know who her father is? She's the youngest of an all female household in Istanbul composed of her great-grandmother, her grandmother, three aunts and her mother Zeliha whose illegitimate child (bastard) she is and who she also calls 'aunt'.

There is a brother, the child before Zeliha, but because all men in the family die a premature death, he's sent to America to study so that he's out of the way of the evil fate waiting for him in Turkey. He's the link between Asya's and Armanush's families as he marries an American woman divorced from an Armenian with whom she's had a daughter, Armanush.

The older the girl becomes, the more she's torn between her American and her Armenian roots; especially the stories about the past of the Armenian people, the genocide committed by the Turks in 1915, in which more than a million Armenians were killed, and their enforced exile trouble her deeply. In order to learn where her place in life is she decides to travel to Istanbul and live for a while with her step-father's family lying to father and mother by telling them that she's staying with the other parent.

The two young women, both 19 years old, couldn't be more different, Asya, the world-weary, sex-crazy, dope smoking, nihilistic student of philosophy and Armanoush, the gentle bookworm who frightens potential boyfriends away with her intellect. Asya is dead set against liking the American girl, but they soon become close friends against all odds.

I'm surprised about some negative reviews I've found on the net. The author is accused of cramming the novel with characters and themes. One reviewer confesses to be befuddled by the many names and misses a family-tree in the book to help him along. I think that with a bit of concentration it's not so difficult to keep in mind who's who in whose family. Salman Rushdie gets away with more chaotic families and more complex themes, but who dares criticise him?

The Bastard of Istanbul is Elif Shafak's (born in 1971) sixth novel, the second written in English before being translated into Turkish. To write, "...It's clear that although Shafak may be a writer of moral compunction, she has yet to become - in English, at any

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