Honour

The novel begins with a woman driving to pick up her brother on his release from prison. She's deeply ambivalent, and the novel then goes back in time; to Iskander's time in prison, to the months before he commits the crime, and farther back to the childhoods of their parents in Turkey, especially that of his mother, Pembe, who grows up in a small Kurdish village with her twin sister, who doesn't emigrate to England, but remains behind, unmarried and respected as being the closest thing that area has to a doctor.

Şafak varies the writing in the novel, with the Kurdish and Turkish portions reading like unfamiliar folktales and the parts set in London written in a more straightforward style. This is a novel about immigrants and their show more children, how they change in response to their new home and how they refuse to change, and how their children juggle two very different worlds.

This was an interesting and thought-provoking book. At times I was frustrated with the hypocrisy built into the patriarchal society the characters come from, but the writing was lovely and the issues and questions raised never took precedence over the characters. show less

Enthralling, deftly written novel of a Turkish/Kurdish family through several generations and their immigrant experience in England dealing with attempting to adapt to English society, still holding on to their culture. They face prejudice from the English and the oldest son, Iskender, perpetrates an "honor killing" after his mother, abandoned by her weak, feckless husband, enters into a platonic relationship with a middle-aged man. This has repercussions that affect the whole family.

We follow the narrative from several family members' viewpoints; the story doesn't follow a linear path but moves from different family members and different years. It took me awhile to get used to this, but chapter headings did make the time periods and show more locations evident. In this thoughtful novel, we discover the nature of love, guilt, shame, misunderstanding, repentance, and forgiveness. One character expresses the thought that "honor lies in the heart, not in the bedroom." The author evokes vividly Turkey, the small Kurdish village near Syria, and blue-collar London. Highly recommended. show less

Honor by Elif Shafak is a tragic story of a shocking honor killing that stuns and shatters the lives and hopes of a Turkish emigrant family living in London in the 1970s.

This book opens with a very strong and beautiful dedication from the author which reads as follows;

When I was seven years old We lived in a green house, one of our neighbours a talented tailor would often beat his wife. In the evenings we listened to the shouts, the crys the swearing. In the mornings we went on with our lives as usual. The entire neighbourhood pretended not to have heard. Not to have seen.
This novel is dedicated to those who hear, those who see.

The stroy within the novel is tragic and powerful and certainly does make you ponder on the lives of those show more women who deal with situaltion like this everyday. The authors writing and account of an emigrant family living and adapting to life in London in 1970 is very well portrayed. I found the writing good and the characters real and vivid.

The narrative does get a little confusing at times as the stroy deals with a lot of characters and goes back and forth between diffferent time spans, countries and characters and at times the story became quite disjounted for me as a result. I was disappointed with the ending of the novel as it just didn't work for me.

Overall an interesting book and in places very powerful stroy telling from Elif Shafak and I would certainly look out for more books by this author. show less

Honour is not a book I probably would have chosen myself to read if I saw it on the shelves but I am so glad I did read it. It was totally different from the usual genres I read so didn’t really know what to expect.
There are many characters from the same family in the book and you get to know who they are.
The books starts with Iskender being released from prison and his sister Esma waiting for him but the next chapter goes back to when their mother was born and how her mother behaved when she had twin girls. She needed to have a son.
The chapters of the book were confusing to start with as they kept jumping from one person to another and went back and forward in the years but this is completely relevant to the story.
It was an show more interesting read as I have not experienced Kurd/Turkish culture and I know little about Muslims, their traditions and beliefs.
The book was well written and I enjoyed reading it. show less

Quite an extraordinary book. The books by Turkish authors that I've read before have had such an overlay of melancholy that it was difficult to differentiate between one person'a misery and another. Ms Shafak is several tiers higher in talent. Each of her characters, however mystical or alien to my background, is clearly delineated and understandable in the context of his or her life. Occasional gems of close to perfect descriptions of a movement only add to the overall mood. The core of this history of three generations of one family is the women -- how they live and die -- and how one is killed by a male relative for honor. Altho I doubt I will ever sympathize with that motivation, I now believe I understand it at least a bit better. show more I look forward to reading this author's other books over time. show less

A wonderfully crafted tale centering around the lives of twin sisters born in a Kurdish village who eventually separate when one twin marries and moves to London, a city whose culture couldn't be more different than her own. The story takes the reader backwards and forwards through time, with each leap providing rich details that shed light on the central event of the book - a crime committed in an attempt to preserve a family's honor. As someone born in the Western world, it was quite enlightening to learn of the subtleties and customs of a culture that is somewhat foreign to me, especially from the perspective of various key characters in the book.

On the negative side, I felt a little lost early on in the book with each leap through show more both time and narrators, trying to remember who was who. And by the end of the book, I was disappointed at some of the story lines never culminated into anything substantial, and were just left hanging, to the point where I wondered why they were in the book in the first place. The best example of this is the 'Orator' who makes an appearance several times in the book, but in the end, his presence didn't add much to he book, except illustrate that Iskender was the leader in his group of friends.

[spoiler alert] I also couldn't comprehend Pembe's decision to go into hiding after her sister's murder, leaving her children behind without parents to care for them. She had nothing to gain by doing so except perhaps to preserve her family's honor, but the cost was much greater than the benefit. She could have just left town with her kids (perhaps as Jamila if required) and started a new life elsewhere. I would have expected the author to help us understand this decision better, by telling it from Pembe's perspective.

But despite the couple of negative points, I still thoroughly enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it to others. show less

I thoroughly enjoyed this book which offers insight into an important and timely topic. Here in Canada we’ve recently had the Shafia case involving the “honour” killings of four female members by the family patriarch, his wife, and the eldest son; but Canada is not alone among western nations in having to confront such incidents.

The story revolves around the Toprak family, a Kurdish-Turkish family of immigrants in London. The family consists of Adem, the father; Pembe, the mother; and their three children: Iskender, the eldest son; Esma, the only daughter; and Yunus, the youngest child. The novel begins in London in 1992 with Iskender’s release from prison after serving a fourteen-year sentence for the “honour” killing of show more his mother. Most of the book is a series of flashbacks spanning the years 1945 to 1992 as we learn about Pembe’s parents, Pembe’s upbringing (along with that of her twin sister Jamila and her six other sisters) in a small Kurdish village near the Euphrates River, Adem’s childhood and family life in Istanbul, and the lives of the Toprak family members in London after their emigration in 1970.

From the beginning, the differences between males and females are emphasized. The difference begins with the names given to sons and daughters: “Male names embodied power, ability and authority. . . . Female names, however, reflected a delicate daintiness . . . [since] women were decorations for this world, pretty trimmings on the side, but not too essential.” Pembe is born into a world where “’honour’ was more than a word. It was also a name. You could call your child ‘Honour’, as long as it was a boy. Men had honour. Old men, middle-aged men, even schoolboys so young that they still smelled of their mother’s milk. Women did not have honour. Instead, they had shame.”

The honour code of Islamic culture is outlined, a code that states that “the honour of the family is deemed to be more important than the happiness of its individuals.” That code is enforced by women as well as men. It is Pembe’s mother who asserts that she would never accept a daughter’s shaming the family by leaving a husband, even if he was abusive; she says, “’No daughter of mine will abandon her husband. If she does, I’ll beat the hell out of her, even if I’m dead by then. I’ll come back as a ghost.’” Women are obsessed with bearing sons, and those that do, dote on them as Pembe does on her eldest, “Her sultan, her lion, the apple of her eye.”

Men have much more latitude in their behaviour. In the novel, a dishonourable man who abandons his family for life with an exotic dancer goes unpunished, yet a young woman who attempts to elope is given a rope with the unspoken order to do what is “honourable.” A young Muslim man may flirt publicly and have extra-marital sex with a non-Muslim girl, but can insist that his own mother not work outside the home and certainly not have even a chaste friendship with a man. A man who should provide guidance to a young man instead incites him to violence against a woman, in part because his family was disgraced by the abandonment of his mother; the fact that his father was a drunk and physically abusive is dismissed.

There are some weaknesses in the novel. In particular, there are the coincidences, too many for my liking. The delinquent son of Esma’s favourite primary-school teacher crosses paths with Yunus and in the end both mother and son play a pivotal role in the future of both of the younger Toprak children? Adem curiously encounters Iskender’s radical mentor who ends up impacting Adem’s life as well as influencing that of his son? There is also some plot manipulation: the introduction of the Amber Concubine seems contrived, and the plot twist near the end stretches credibility, although the enigmatic opening and the comedy of errors during Adem’s first visit to the Kurdish village do function as foreshadowing. The relationship between the 7-year-old Yunus and the 20-year-old Tobiko is unrealistic, and Pembe’s lack of supervision of her youngest son’s activities is also unbelievable.

Despite these flaws, the novel is certainly a good read, and its strengths far outweigh its weaknesses. It deals with serious issues and has some heartbreaking scenes, but it is ultimately hopeful: “In this world every creature was made to challenge, to change” and it is possible to find a man “who believes that honour has got to do with people’s hearts rather than their bedrooms.” I will definitely be recommending this book and seeking out Shafak’s other novels in English.

Note: I received a pre-release copy of the book from the publisher via NetGalley. show less