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  • Published: 20 October 2010
  • ISBN: 9780141961378
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 448

The Flea Palace




By turns comic and tragic, The Flea Palace is an outstandingly original novel driven by an overriding sense of social justice.

Bonbon Palace was once a stately apartment block in Istanbul. Now it is a sadly dilapidated home to ten wildly different individuals and their families.

There's a womanizing, hard-drinking academic with a penchant for philosophy; a 'clean freak' and her lice-ridden daughter; a lapsed Jew in search of true love; and a charmingly naïve mistress whose shadowy past lurks in the building. When the rubbish at Bonbon Palace is stolen, a mysterious sequence of events unfold that result in a soul-searching quest for truth.

By turns comic and tragic, The Flea Palace is an outstandingly original novel driven by a powerful sense of social justice.

  • Published: 20 October 2010
  • ISBN: 9780141961378
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 448

About the author

Elif Shafak

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish novelist, whose work has been translated into fifty-seven languages. The author of twenty books, fourteen of which are novels, she is a bestselling author in many countries around the world. Shafak's previous novel, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, was the UK’s bestselling literary hardback novel of 2025, selling over 500,000 copies. Her work has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, amongst others, and she is currently nominated for ‘Author of the Year’ at the British Book Awards. Elif Shafak was appointed President of the Royal Society of Literature in 2025. Her books have sold several million copies worldwide.

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Praise for The Flea Palace

Picaresque charm with a touch of magic realism

Independent

An enchanting combination of compassion and cruelty . . . Elif Shafak is the best author to come out of Turkey in the last decade

Orhan Pamuk

Picaresque

Guardian

A gem of a novel

Waterstones

Wonderful

Bookseller

Ms Shafak is well set to challenge Mr Pamuk as Turkey's foremost contemporary novelist

Economist