It is 1974 on the island of Cyprus. Two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided land, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home. The tavern is the only place that Kostas, who is Greek and Christian, and Defne, who is Turkish and Muslim, can meet, in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic, chilli peppers and wild herbs. This is where one can find the best food in town, the best music, the best wine. But there is something else to the place: it makes one forget, even if for just a few hours, the world outside and its immoderate sorrows.
In the centre of the tavern, growing through a cavity in the roof, is a fig tree. This tree will witness their hushed, happy meetings, their silent, surreptitious departures; and the tree will be there when the war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to rubble, when the teenagers vanish and break apart.
Decades later in north London, sixteen-year-old Ada Kazantzakis has never visited the island where her parents were born. Desperate for answers, she seeks to untangle years of secrets, separation and silence. The only connection she has to the land of her ancestors is a Ficus Carica growing in the back garden of their home.
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Once upon a memory, at the far end of the Mediterranean Sea, there lay an island so beautiful and blue that many travellers, pilgrims crusaders and merchants who fell in love with it either wanted never to leave or tried to tow it with hemp ropes all the way back to their own countries. ISLAND
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(@PenguinUKBooks, 5 August 2021, 368, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @BorrowBox, # POPSUGARReadingChallenge, a book you know nothing about)
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I've read and enjoyed other books by the author but had never heard of this book before I chose it for the challenge. I really enjoyed this book. The book moves between the present with Ava trying to find out about her parent's past and the reason behind her mother's suicide and the past when Defne and Kostas meet and fall in love. There are also chapters narrated by a fig tree, I kid you not. This is a beautifully written book about love, loss and history. I found it engrossing.