The Island of Missing Trees, Elif Shafak
The Island of Missing Trees tells the story of Cyprus’s ancient division between Turkey and Greece and the inevitable violence that ensued through the perspectives of a fig tree and the child of Cypriot immigrants who left the island because of the discrimination they faced as a Greek-Turkish couple. Ada is struggling through her adolescence and knows almost nothing of her parents’ past nor what they went through, as her Greek relatives have never come to England to see her or her parents, even after the death of her mother. All that changes when her aunt arrives for a visit, determined to surround Ada with as much of her culture as possible, part of which involves answers, although truth be told, readers attain more answers from the chapters in which the fig tree is telling her story more than the others. I was in Cyprus just last year, and I wish I would have read this book before going as a starting point in understanding Cyprus’s complicated history. As usual, Shafak has provided readers with an enriching narrative about a country that remains elusive to the majority of travelers going to Europe, who often skip over it in favor of more popular destinations.
The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich
The Night Watchman follows the lives of several members of the Chippewa tribe as they fight to save not only their tribal land, promised to them in treaties by the US government and now being threatened by the very same, but also themselves. Erdrich based this story on true events in the life of her grandfather, who was also tribal spokesman and the night watchman at a factory on the reservation, just like one of the main characters in the novel, Thomas, who was vital in the fight to save their land. The book also focuses on Patrice, who is searching for her sister who has gone missing in the city after being promised a life and a job through a relocation program. This novel exposes the horrid treatment the indigenous people of North America have received from the US government in a different setting than that which most readers are used to, that is, the residential schools that ruined the lives of so many, stripping them of their heritage, dignity, and in a lot of cases, their very lives. The novel’s only flaw is the absolute multitude of characters, introduced almost until the very end, which was hard to keep track of for a memory-deprived person such as myself.