This is an enchanting, compassionate and wise novel and storytelling at its most sublime' Polly Samson Here introducing its narrating tree, the novel uses the rhetorical figure of prosopopoeia, in which a dead or inanimate object is given a voice, to unmute the arboreal. Early accounts of literary devices understand prosopopoeia as “the counterfeit impersonation,” as George Puttenham describes it in his Art of English Poesy, adding that “[I]f ye will feign any person with such features, qualities and conditions, or if ye will attribute any human quality, as reason or speech, to dumb creatures or other insensible things, and do such study […] to give them a human person, it is […] prosopopoeia” (183). The novel’s vocal tree is not so much the fig of Genesis but rather those talkative ones in the Book of Judges: “Then the trees said to the fig tree, ‘You come and be our king!’ The fig tree replied, ‘Must I forgo my sweetness, forgo my excellent fruit, to go and hold sway over the trees?” (Sutton 26). These biblical associations suggest there is a long history to imagining voice and agency for “insensible things.” On the one hand, then, the novel’s conceit of a talking tree is inherently anthropomorphic, a human ventriloquizing of nature that appropriates arboreal alterity in the interests of human characters’ actions and feelings. On the other, however, Shafak’s elevation of the tree to narrating character makes sense in a climate crisis context, a recognition of trees’ pre-eminence that corresponds to their status as the planet’s lungs, and thus of high priority in mitigating against Anthropogenic climate change. As Stuart Cooke argues, “[t]here has never been a more urgent need to better understand the lives of our arboreal companions” (215). Responsive to this need, Shafak activates Adrienne Rich’s insistence that “in times like these |to have you listen at all, it's necessary |to talk about trees” (Rich 1995). Her novel is a listening act. It brings the reader into arboreal life, drawing on what we already know about arboreal agency, that is how trees “act autonomously, outside the confines and expectations of human actions” by feeding, seeding themselves, and growing in unexpected places and forms (Jones and Cloke 57). This is particularly evident where the arboreal narrator describes her ecosystem:

Between the scream, unleashed by the teenage heroine Ada during Mrs Wallcott’s history lesson, and the ceremonial rebirth of the fig, there are star-crossed lovers cauterised and separated by the violence of the 1974 civil war in Cyprus, investigations of multigenerational trauma and determined searches for the loved and lost. There are eccentric aunties who chat about the gods as though they were the neighbours (Aphrodite is pretty “but a bitch”), a teenage social media storm #doyouhearmenow, a lament for the cruel trade in songbirds and a self-help guide for adults seeking arboreal consolation. Redefining Trauma is one first person blog on how the author has worked to understand her own trauma and the importance of de-stigmatizing trauma. Does your mind circle through time or is your thinking and memory more linear? When does the passage of time most startle you? Most comfort you? When do you feel time repeating itself? Secrets

SHAFAK: How do you tell the story of a divided land without yourself falling into the trap of tribalism or without yourself falling into the trap of nationalism? As a storyteller, I could never find an angle, an opening, until I found the fig tree. So this might sound weird, but I feel grateful to the fig tree because it gave me a completely different perspective, and only then I was able to sit down and start writing the novel. The Cyprus setting is stunningly described in this spellbinding story about identity, love and loss * Good Housekeeping, 'this month's 10 books to read right now' (September) * Shafak combines mimicry and metaphor in her Fig Tree character as the tree’s annual rings communicate history and symbolize human immigration. The Fig Tree takes its role as a storyteller very seriously, explaining how it tries “to grasp every story through diverse angles, shifting perspectives, conflicting narratives,” drawing a biological parallel: “Truth is a rhizome—an underground plant stem with lateral shoots. You need to dig deep to reach it and, once unearthed, you have to treat it with respect.” Inhabiting a voice from a different species in an authentic manner is difficult, but the Fig Tree pulls it off with endearing dignity by highlighting collaborative experiences. “Untold stories bring us together,” Shafak writes. “Numbness is destroying our world.” Elif Shafak The well-traveled novelist Elif Shafak once made a discovery about a well-traveled tree. She was living in the United States when she learned about the fig.

The story begins in the “late 2010s” with Ada Kazantzakis, a 16-year-old north Londoner. Her mother, Defne, died 11 months earlier, leaving Ada and her father Kostas scalded by loss. Kostas grieves discreetly, consumed by misery in the garden at night, while Ada watches from an upper window.

A tree always knows that it is linked to endless life forms – from honey fungus, the largest living thing, down to the smallest bacteria and archaea – and that its existence is not an isolated happenstance but intrinsic to a wider community. Even trees of different species show solidarity with one another regardless of their difference, which is more than you can say for so many humans (Shafak 100).