Review of "The Island of Missing Trees" by Elif Shahak

 

Ruth read this in her book club, and I needed something that wasn't too heavy, so I gave this a go. It's a sort of magical realist novel with a Cyprus context, a pair of lovers across the Greek-Turkish divide, with a split narrative across different time periods. It was quite enjoyable, and it motivated me to read up a bit on the Cyprus conflict, which I thought I knew about. 

In doing so I was reminded how much the history of the island is bound up with the history of Israel and Palestine. The ethnic conflict there, eventually leading to partition, is in some ways a similar story. Also the illegal migrants of the Aliyah Bet were imprisoned on Cyprus, and later Israelis barred from marrying by the rabbis would go there to register a legal marriage which would then be recognised in Israel. And much later some of the Lebanese militias ran their radio stations, and even their cellular networks, out of Cyprus.