381 pages (large print) ; 25 cm

In 1999, in a town on the outskirts of Istanbul, Sinan Batioethlu is caught up in everyday problems. Despite the hardships he confronts as a minority Kurd he must be a role model for his nine-year-old son Ysmail, who is preparing for his coming-of-age ceremony. Meanwhile his teenage daughter Yrem grows more resentful of having to help her mother run the house, cover her glorious hair beneath a headscarf, and refrain from watching Western television. But the delicate stability of this family is about to be tested in the wake of a devastating earthquake that will strip Sinan of his home and livelihood, and with them his certainty as a father, husband and man of faith. Reliant upon missionaries running the camp they now call home and morally indebted to an American whom he distrusts (and whose son Dylan exerts a frightening pull on Yrem), Sinan becomes entangled in a series of increasingly dangerous decisions. Pushed towards a final betrayal, Sinan may yet find that everything he holds dear is destroyed, like the streets of Istanbul that lie in rubble beneath his feet

Originally published: London: Bloomsbury, 2008

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