Shelfology Book Pairing

by Natsuko Imamura

'Chilling.' Vogue 'As unusual as it is alluring.' Elle 'Delightfully disturbing.' Refinery 29 'Very powerful.' Sayaka Murata 'Disquieting.' Paula Hawkins 'You will be obsessed.' Leila Slimani The Woman in the Purple Skirt is being watched. Someone is following her, always perched just out of sight, monitoring which buses she takes; what she eats; whom she speaks to. But this invisible observer isn't a stalker - it's much more complicated than that.

by Elif Shafak

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 Island of Missing Trees', prizewinning author Elif Shafak brings us a rich, magical tale of belonging and identity, love and trauma, memory and amnesia, human-induced destruction of nature, and, finally, renewal.