Honour [Paperback]

Honour opens with Iskender's release from prison.

What follows is a sad and strange alternation of pasts and present, chronicling the lives of the members of the Toprak family, and anyone connected to them: Pembe and Adem, their children - charismatic Iskender, rebellious Esma, and reserved and thoughtful Younus; their parents and their childhood, their children's adulthoods, their mistakes and their tragedies, happinesses and despair, triumphs and failures - all of it is contained in these 352 pages.

Everything leads up to or away from 30th November, 1978 - the day Iskender Toprak commits a horrifying crime. It spans decades and miles, leaping from point to point in space and time, yet always coming back to that fateful day - how did it happen, why did it happen? Who is really responsible? How does a status quo so ruthlessly cut down its victims? Who *are* the victims, or is everyone complicit, a perpetrator? I think what best sums up what underlies this book is what Shafak writes, that 'men have honour - women have shame'.

It's such a nuanced and careful writing of the cultural backdrop - doing justice not only to Eastern culture (in this case Turkish and Kurdish), but also to Western, and to the peculiar tragedy of cultural immiscibility - forgetting the obvious East/West front, Shafak protrays so many levels of difference: Kurdish/Turkish, male/female, urban/rural, rich/poor, white/non-white, married/unmarried, sonless/with sons, virgin/tainted, captive/captor, victim/aggressor - you can't point at any person and isolate them from everyone else, into a single 'differentness': their differences and sameness are liquid and overlapping, sometimes changing in a minute. There is something so...rich, textured and multilayered about Shafak's narrative.

It's a provocative title, and appropriate: Iskender does what he does 'for honour'. And just as the events keep returning to Iskender's crime, so the themes keep returning to this idea of honour. In the end, though, after the double-standards and false platitudes, you realise that this idea of honour is nothing but an excuse for raging hypocrisy, abuse and self-gratification at the expense of others, and you begin to understand what real honour should be - something accorded to people based on shared humanity, not the reserve of men who live by their own rules, yet impose an impossible or ludicrous standard on others.

A lot of things in this book make me angry - they make me angry as a woman (especially a Muslim woman), and as a human being. Not the book itself, but for the fact that these are stories that really happen. The hypocrisy, the self-righteousness, the idea that a man's honour, instead of elevating him, makes him commandeering, ugly and small, and moreover the idea that women are not honoured or deserving of honour, but shamed and shameful. 'Honour' is not a social or political commentary, but it certainly wakes up a womanly anger in me, and a tearing pain for any woman who has to endure the things Pembe and Jamila did.

As a semi-final note, it strikes me that the heart and soul of this story is sisterhood. There are actual sisters: the identical twins Pembe and Jamila, their six older sisters (especially Hediye), Esma, Esma's twin daughters, and then the wider sisterhood of women helping women. 'Honour' is in no way either misogynstic or misandristic...but it is more like...pro-gynistic? Is that a word?

This book is so heavily saturated with the markers I use to note places of interest or just phrases or passages I loved - a good way to measure how much I think of a book is by the density of them. I find it incredible that Elif Shafak has written a book of such magnificent scale, linguistic quality, historical and cultural integrity, all in what is her second language. I strongly recommend anyone interested in the book or the author to hop on over to YouTube and watch her TEDTalk called 'The Politics of Fiction'. It's what sold me on her in the first place.

This is an agonising tale of families, love and tragic misunderstandings. But it is so acutely observed and sensitively handled that it is hard to put down. It is as much about the British immigrant experience as it is about Turkish & Kurdish culture - the clashes are inevitable.

Initially at least, it is little confusing to follow as we flit from generation to generation of one extended family. One minute we're in a very rural community on the banks of the Euphrates, the next minute we're in East London 25 years later, then we're whisked to a prison outside Shrewsbury in the early 90s. This gives it a kaleidoscopic feel - it is disorientating. But then perhaps that is the point. For just like the immigrants of the story, it's hard to know where you are at times.

The obvious theme of the book's title is a difficult one, and hard for westerners to fully appreciate. It takes an insider like Elif Shafak, who has known both worlds first hand, to be able to articulate it well. What comes across so clearly are the double standards of what is acceptable, or 'honourable' for men and women. Things are so clearly unfair - and the consequences are truly terrible. But as one hears more about so called 'honour killings' in the media, it is vital to understand the mentality behind them (if there is a logic to them at all) - and this book will go a long way to helping with that. We in the West are so atomised that our families now barely even count as nuclear - the idea of loyalties and responsibilities to wider family members seems increasingly alien. But what this book tentatively seems to suggest is that neither west nor middle east has it quite right. Extended family relationships can also be distorted and dysfunctional. Both worlds leave one crying for something better...

This is beautifully written and poignant book. And one that can only improve mutual cultural understanding.

This story follows 2 Kurdish twin sisters whose destinies are very different. The book reflects on women's lives and the expectations around how they should behave within the expectations of their culture and the perceived responsibilities of men to maintain order. Whilst there were some very moving parts of this book, I could not find myself connecting emotionally to the characters, who seemed to be driven by fate rather than by self-determination. Rather than being emotionally connected to this story, I found it an interesting exploration of the issues around shame, honour and a woman's place in the Kurdish community.