The Flea Palace by Elif Shafak

"An enchanting combination of compassion and cruelty . . . Elif Shafak is the best author to come out of Turkey in the last decade."-Orhan Pamuk
The setting is a stately residence in Istanbul, built by Russian noble émigré Pavel Antipov for his wife Agripina at the end of the Tsarist reign-now sadly dilapidated, flea-infested and home to ten families. Shafak uses the structure of A Thousand and One Nights to construct a story-within-a-story narrative.
Elif Shafak is an outstanding name amongst young Turkish authors. She has written four novels and won the Mevlana Prize for the best work in mystical and transcendental literature. She is in the middle of a residency at the Massachusetts Five College Program in women's studies and resides in Mount Holyoke, USA.