“If families resemble trees, as they say, arborescent structures with entangled roots and individual branches jutting out at awkward angles, family traumas are like thick, translucent resin dripping from a cut in the bark. They trickle down generations.”
—From The Island of Missing Trees
relays the fictional history of a mixed Greek and Turkish family’s beginnings on the divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus with only a fig tree for a witness. Backdropped against the violent days of The Turkish-Greek crisis of 1974, two teenagers, Kostas, a Greek, and Defne, who is Turkish, meet at a Nicosia tavern called the Happy Fig. The pair fall in love at this quiet spot with a fig tree growing through the roof in the middle of its dining area. Years later, Kostos is living in London with his daughter, Ada, and a fig tree (grown from a clipping taken from the original tree at the taverna) in their garden. This tree becomes another witness when Meryem, Ada’s maternal aunt, comes to visit. Ada, long anxious to better understand her own origins, finally learns the details of her parents’ astonishing past, revelations that feel well-earned in this novel.