The Island of Missing Trees

Elif Shafak is a Turkish British writer. She was born in Strasbourg, France, where her father was studying for a PhD in philosophy. After her parents separated, Shafak lived with her mother, Şafak Atayman, in Ankara, Turkey. From five to ten years old, Shafak’s maternal grandmother helped raise her while her mother returned to the university to advance her career, later becoming a diplomat. Shafak has published more than 15 books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Forty Rules of Love (2009), The Architect’s Apprentice (2013), and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (2019), which was nominated for the Booker Prize. In 2022, The Island of Missing Trees (2021) was nominated for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her 2006 novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, led Turkish authorities to put Shafak on trial for “insulting Turkishness.” Shafak was ultimately acquitted of the charges, but she has maintained a self-imposed exile from Turkey at various times for fear of persecution. Shafak holds a PhD in political science from Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, and she is an advocate for freedom of expression and LGBTQ+ rights. Many of her books touch on themes of gender equity, human rights, and Turkish history.

The novel concerns the Greek and Turkish conflict in Cyprus and the impacts of that conflict. The British took control of Cyprus in 1878 (the same year the fig tree is born in the novel), following centuries of the island’s rule by the Ottoman Empire. The enosis movement, which aimed to achieve the union of Cyprus with Greece, gained momentum during the early and mid-1900s. In 1955, the Greek guerilla military force EOKA launched an armed effort to abolish British governance. Beginning in 1958, Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot political representatives began working toward the independence of Cyprus. Independence meant that the island would not be under British rule, but it also meant that it wouldn’t be considered part of Turkey or Greece. Cyprus achieved that independence in 1960, but conflicts and disputes between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots continued. EOKA-B, a far-right Greek nationalist paramilitary organization, was founded in 1971. In 1974, the Cypriot National Guard, supported by the Greek military junta and EOKA-B, orchestrated a coup d’état which overthrew the democratically elected Archbishop Makarios III and installed the enosis-advocate Nikos Sampson in his place. In response, Turkish forces invaded the island. A ceasefire was reached, and the “Green Line” divided the country into Greek and Turkish sides, a division that remains to this day. 

The novel’s central love story between Kostas and Defne, two people from warring factions and different cultures, is reminiscent of the story of star-crossed lovers in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In that play, a relationship between Romeo and Juliet seems impossible because their families, the Montagues and Capulets, are sworn enemies. Similar to Romeo and Juliet, Kostas and Defne’s love story is ultimately doomed as Defne, like Juliet, swallows a form of poison that puts her into a coma. A fig tree is one of the central characters and principal narrators of The Island of Missing Trees, similar to the novel The Overstory by Richard Powers. The Overstory highlights its human characters’ relationships with trees, and the novel is structured similarly to The Island of Missing Trees, with different sections of the book corresponding to different parts of a tree. The Island of Missing Trees is particularly interested in how trees and plants communicate; Peter Wohlleben’s nonfiction book The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World covers many similar topics. The novel Songbirds by Christy Lefteri tells, in part, the story of a songbird poacher in Cyprus (in The Island of Missing Trees, songbird poachers beat up Kostas after he cuts down their nests). To write The Island of Missing Trees, Shafak consulted several nonfiction accounts of the conflict in Cyprus and its aftermath, including Beneath the Carob Trees: The Lost Lives of Cyprus by Rory MacLean and Nick Danziger and The Cyprus Problem: What Everyone Needs to Know by James Ker-Lindsay.