Honor by Elif Shafak Review

Bald is released Iskender from custody. Fourteen years he was in prison, because he had committed an “honor killing”. Until his sister Esma it collects in Shrewsbury, it must be mentally on the so unreal as unbearable situation prepare, and they have their mother has the story completed Pembe, a family history, the secret she kept hidden until now in front of her seven year-old twin daughters. “To wrap the truth in veil her so deeply buried in the normality that it is hard to even more can remember after a while, is with us a family tradition … Now I do the same with my children.

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In addition to the unfathomable additions of destiny draw has always been Allah’s laws the life of the small village community, and between them operate the three village elders. They speculate all day long in the Tea House “about the mystery of the divine will” and watch, comment, assess and determine in particular the nature of women.

“Dignity” and “modesty” was their only protective “shield” against “shame” and “sacrilege”. The “shame” refers, of course solely the young girls and women. When God created man, he created the men as the superior sex and clad them in black, but the women in white “from all bright batiste”. Every little speck of dust on it that catches your eye, so that “Stained” (which a man indulged outside of marriage) are immediately discovered and expelled. A man, however, has nothing to lose except his “honor”, and this happens to him if his wife gives him a “disgrace”

. What is left to women in such a narrow system, threatened and left alone with their fears but to seek in superstition and spirits protection from evil? If one has made a mistake by them, has become weak, they blame it on the magic of “jinns”, haunted houses, the women “jinx”.

In large leaps in time and told from different perspectives “honor” the dramatic life of the twins Pembe and Jamila and the possibility of parents, children, relatives and acquaintances who influence the course. The young Adem, for example, falls for Jamila, but after she was kidnapped, her virginity remained unknown, he is why the safe side rather Pembe married.

The ways of the sisters separate, so we that we times in Jamila’s hut located in a village on the banks of the Euphrates, sometimes at Pembe in London. Jamila remains unmarried, works as a midwife and healer and their fellow men as helpful as scary. Pembe who uprooted Kurd, draws in the British metropolis her three children Esma, Iskender and Yunus large and learns slums, drug scene, communist squatters and the prison know where her son is serving his sentence.

looked as girls Pembe full confidence in the future, wanted out into the world and aspired to greater things; Now she lives with her family in a bleak, siffigen basement apartment – “not enough light, but a lot of moisture.” In their dilapidated quarters the immigrants keep to themselves, and in this Muslim microcosm of the rules their culture of origin are much more extreme than lived in the Turkish homeland. Again they close in the name of decency, a particularly women. Here more women wear the “hijab” as in Istanbul; here is “feminism like a snowman in the Sahara. You do not need him.” Because, as the men

Really be happy not boast, “We respect our mothers, sisters and wives.” The immigrants. Adem seeks salvation in gambling, falls in love with a Russian dancer Strip, leaves his family. Find Pembe has a job. She works as cheap domestic help for wealthy spouses whose Villa it keeps in order and they take advantage of lousy way. Like many other immigrants, they must see that they are nothing as work animals, often vilified by racists, never treated as a guest. “The British were always polite. They spit to get a so accommodating in the face that you almost reckoned addition a handkerchief enough.” Worst of all, that Pembe their children must often leave alone. What they are doing during the day so, who they’re dealing, do not get with the mother. A little comfort, support and encouragement they found in an elderly gentleman with whom she meets a couple of times.

Without plate blame or moral condemnation the author makes clear what a fatal role strict patriarchy in the Islamic society plays and that those who have to suffer from most, cause its continuation at the same time. It is the women themselves who uphold the traditional concept of honor and submit to him, and it is the mothers who raise their sons to be patriarchs. Also Pembe loves “their Sultan, their lions, her eyeball” idolatrous, spoiled him, lets him go through everything and pray for him.

Instead of his father puts Iskender take the place of the family head. He is responsible for the “honor” of the family. His uncle and a Muslim preacher indicate to him that this was in danger, because the harmless his mother meetings are not gone unnoticed by and construed overzealous as “sins.” In hardly unmistakable hints the two men talk a the boy that he would restore the “shame” and turn the “honor” of the family. The disaster is inevitable …

“honor” is encompasses a broad family epic that four decades, and two worlds. The centerpiece is a Uprooted that is tricky in a foreign culture, in which they remain homeless, which they consider wrong feel needs: What’s their home an ordinary peasant food (couscous), is praised here as a specialty; what key for them values ​​(honor, shame) is taken here to be taken lightly. Incomprehension, contradictions and conflicts result of the evil that comes through the family and can be stopped either by the deep-rooted love between twin sisters nor their sacrifice.

“honor” are gentle, empathetic, touching Novel. The fantastic storytelling the author takes us into a fairytale world full of poetry from the Arabian Nights (Adem said, “Some love is like a gleaming star that zuzwinkere people and her heart even in bad times with joy and hope fill.”). Then develop action and dialogues an eerie, powerful suction, which stirs up every reader and sweeps. Many of the events described take a dramatic course and leave us shaken back, such as “The rope” in which Pembes eldest sister Hediye is served by a misstep a rope like a meal, as a wordless request, the family of their ignominious presence chapter to free.

“glory” tells of Islam by the power of the principles, traditions and customs. Its traditional values ​​and wisdom are little in an individualistic, freedom, flexibility and progress oriented Western society and can hardly be understood there: “The less a man possessed was the greater the value of his honor.” “A man who had been robbed of his honor, was a dead man.” At the end of the novel can be seen on the horizon, no hopeful glimmer. The two worlds remain incompatible.

No wonder the books of author Elif Shafak in Turkey find a broad reading public, however, sharply criticized by politicians and religious leaders.

This book was I on the list Zu my

20 Lieblingsbüchern”