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The Flea Palace
The Flea Palace
Nov 11, 2025 10:04 PM

Author:Elif Shafak

The Flea Palace

Shortlisted for the 2005 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, Elif Shafak's The Flea Palace is a moving and highly original novel about a group of individuals who live in the same building and who together become embroiled in a mystery.

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 unfolds that result in a soul-searching quest for truth.

'Picaresque' Guardian

'Hyperactive and hilarious' Independent

*** ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, IS AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW ***

Reviews

Inventive and surreal

—— Financial Times

I Am Radar is as easy to enjoy for its swaggering tragicomic spirit as it is to admire for its celestial ambition

—— New York Times Book Review

Big, beautiful, ambitious… His prose is addictive and enchanting

—— Los Angeles Times

Larsen has wit, intelligence, empathy and imagination. What he turns his clear gifts to next promises to be fascinating

—— Stuart Kelly , Scotland on Sunday

Chameleonic, ambitious, epic, fantastical, whimsical, thought-provoking, arcane, philosophical, exhaustive, and completely bonkers — these are just some of the words that could be used to describe I Am Radar… Unquestionably one of the more adventurous entries into the literary landscape

—— Boston Globe

One of our most highly anticipated novels of the year

—— Time Out New York

I am Radar provides oldfangled delights. Larsen can describe humanity at its worst…but his lightness of touch and enjoyably complex characters keep you hoping for the best

—— James Kidd , Literary Review

Larsen has wit, intelligence, empathy and imagination

—— Scotland on Sunday

Balances exciting stories with celebrations about the powers of electricity and political art.

—— Randy Boyagoda , Guardian

Gripping ... masterly ... Larsen is an effortless magician, and his performance here is a pure delight

—— Publishers Weekly

Utterly convincing... An original and thought-provoking exploration of the way history casts its ripples through generations

—— Bookmunch

The novel succeeds in talking about the horror of horrors because of the illuminating prism through which it is rendered, and because of its compassion, intelligence and respect

—— Grace McCleen , Independent on Sunday

[A] remarkable novel

—— Independent on Sunday

A fine, complex piece of writing

—— New Statesman

Laub has crafted a book not only about the power of memory but also about moving on from suffering and taking responsibility for our own actions, and for the people we become

—— Billy O’Callaghan , Irish Examiner

Laub is trying to create both an incantatory effect and gradually excavate the past; he succeeds brilliantly… A gripping, thoughtful novel, fluidly translated… Laub beautifully retrieves the tragedy of the holocaust from its scholarship, politics and deniers, cutting to the bone of human life, its longings and limitations.

—— Tabish Khair , Irish Independent

Albert has made a novel that approaches depression and maternal anxiety with candid honesty, transforming writing on motherhood forever

—— Aaron Calvin , AskMen UK

A hilarious, honest, and eye-opening book, this is a must have for any new mum or mum-to-be

—— Mummy Pages

Funny and heartfelt

—— i (The paper for today)

Ms. Moran['s] ... funny and cheerfully dirty coming-of-age novel has a hard kernel of class awareness ... sloppy, big-hearted and alive in all the right ways.

—— Dwight Garner , New York Times

there’s so much real feeling too. Johanna’s vulnerability and bravado, as she moves out of her world and falls in love is beautifully done’ or ‘ and running through it all, with a visceral power that most writers should envy, is the shame and grinding anxiety of being poor

—— Sunday Times

Moran also writes brilliantly about music, and especially about what music can do. She carries Johanna through this novel with incredible verve, extravagant candour, and a lot of heart. Johanna is … a wonderful heroine. A heroine who cares, who bravely sallies forth and makes things happen, who gives of herself, who is refreshingly unashamed. She’s so confident, it’s glorious

—— The Independent on Sunday

an entertaining read, with Moran in fine voice – hilarious, wild, imaginative and highly valuable…Moran is in danger of becoming to female masturbation what Keats was to Nightingales…

—— Barbara Ellen , The Observer

rude, big-hearted, wise-cracking novel…so filthy she’ll make you blush

—— Christina Patterson , The Sunday Times

This is going to be a bestseller…A sharp, hilarious and controversial read

—— The Bookseller

Ali Smith is a master of language. Vigorous, vivid writing that is Ali Smith incarnate

—— Alice Thompson , Herald

Ingeniously conceived, gloriously inventive

—— NPR

Dizzyingly ambitious . . . endlessly artful, creating work that feels infinite in its scope and intimate at the same time. [A] swirling panoramic

—— Atlantic

Brilliant . . . the sort of death-defying storytelling acrobatics that don't seem entirely possible

—— Washington Post

Having read this now twice, in both directions so to speak, I've decided - and I do not write this flippantly - that Ali Smith is a genius

—— Susan McCallum , LA Review of Books

Approaches the world as only a novel can. The book moves not so much in a straight line as in a twisting helix pattern . . . delivers the heat of life and the return of beauty in the face of loss

—— Kenneth Miller , Everyday Ebook

A unique conversation between past and present

—— Milwaukee Journal

Wildly inventive . . . lyrical, fresh

—— Bustle Magazine
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