The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak (Penguin, $37)

Turkish novelist Elif Shafak has spoken out against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan so forcefully that she has put a target on her back for Erdogan’s intimidation. It’s therefore encouraging that such state-sponsored thuggery has done nothing to diminish her faith in the power of storytelling. Her latest novel takes us to Cyprus in 1974, where two teens – a Greek boy named Kostas and a Turkish girl named Defne – risk their parents’ condemnation by meeting secretly at night before, following the Turkish military invasion, Kostas is sent to England in hopes of saving his life, while Defne remains behind as her homeland burns.

The narrator as a fig tree is an odd conceit but not surprising from an author, who’s a rare alchemist who can mix grains of tragedy and delight.