Three daughters of Eve, by Elif Shafak

Elif Shafak, born in Istanbul and currently living in London, is a popular Turkish author who writes in both her native Turkish and English.  Lacking any mention of a translator, I assume this recent book has been written in English or translated from the Turkish by Shafak.  It is fluent and vernacular.  Three young Muslim women meet as students at Oxford.  The main character, Peri, is from an Istanbul family.  Her father, an incipient alcoholic, is secular while her mother has become an increasingly  devout believer over the years.  Mona, Egyptian-American, is observant and wears a headscarf, but does not think that this defines her as a person.  Shirin, a bit older than the others, has escaped from Iran and has no use for religion of any kind.  She does, however, urge both the new girls to try to get accepted into a seminar lead by the charismatic and controversial young don, A. Z. Azur.  The course title?  “God.”  As the novel opens, it is about fifteen years after the young women met.  Peri, on her way to an opulent dinner party at a mansion owned by a successful, and possibly corrupt, businessman, has her purse stolen out of the backseat while her car is stuck in the typical Istanbul traffic.  Pursuing the robber on foot, she is able to retrieve the stolen purse, but as she does, an old polaroid photo of the three women and Azur falls out, reminding her of their time together and the events that lead to their falling out.  The rest of the book alternates between the events in the early 2000s at Oxford and present-day Turkey, with all its internal contradictions between the former secular democracy and increasingly strong-man theocracy it is becoming.  In many ways, Peri’s childhood experiences torn between her parents beliefs and disbeliefs is an echo of the current political situation there.  Despite many pages of lengthy religious debates, the novel moves at break-neck speed to a surprising ending.  367 pp.