Chosen for Waterstone's 2005 Summer Reading Promotion, The Flea Palace has made Elif Shafak a Turkish author of international repute, seen as the next big talent after the rise of Orhan Pamuk. Set in a stately but dilapidated mansion, now divided into apartments, each inhabitant tells his or her story as the book weaves through the sultry air of Istanbul.

The setting is a stately residence in Istanbul built by Russian noble emigre Pavel Antipov for his wife Agripina at the end of the Tsarist reign, now sadly dilapidated, flea-infested, and home to ten families. Shafak uses the narrative structure of A Thousand and One Nights to construct a story-within-a-story narrative. Inhabitants include Ethel, a lapsed Jew in search of true love and the sad and beautiful Blue Mistress whose personal secret provides the novel with an unforgettable denouement. Add to this a strange, intensifying stench whose cause is revealed at the end of the book, we have a metaphoric conduit for the cultural and spiritual decay in the heart of Istanbul.

Every now and then an absolute gem of a novel arrives. The Flea Palace is one such book. I rate it as highly as Shadow of the Wind and am on a personal crusade to encourage as many people as possible to read it this year. Scott Pack, Waterstones

2007-02-12 hmm...shallow

Suddenly anything that smells a bit of orientalism is shown like a great piece of literature. Well, there is a fine line between literature and orientalism, especially political orientalism. If you want to see this line read the book. If you are looking for a great piece of literature work, I do not recommend it. Also, in the book description it says "next big talent after the rise of Orhan Pamuk". Blind me, when did that happen? Elif Shafak always have had great popular support for her work, but she is definitely not the next biggest talent after Orhan Pamuk. She is an average social scientist (two stars for that), with no magnificent literature talent.