Gardens of Water

Turkey, 1999. A devastating earthquake brings Istanbul crumbling to the ground, ripping apart the fragile stability of Sinan's world. His family home becomes a makeshift tent in a camp run by Western missionaries whom he stubbornly distrusts, and he soon finds himself struggling to protect his family's honour and values. As he becomes a helpless witness to his daughter's dangerous infatuation with a young American, Sinan takes a series of drastic decisions with unforeseeable consequences. Cultures clash, political and religious tensions mount, and Sinan's actions spiral into a powerful and heartbreaking conclusion.

“'Gardens of Water is an important novel ”

'A powerful look at love and heartbreak' Marie Claire ... Drew explores, with respect and understanding, clashes between cultures, faiths, and generations, in an intricately woven novel ... Gardens of Water is a real triumph, and it introduces an exciting new writer and voice' Yiyun Li, author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers 'A penetrating, tightly-focused novel which balances the sweetness of youth and the brooding anxieties of parenthood with a robust understanding of the Muslim-Western encounter' Leila Aboulela, author of Minaret 'A novel in which disastrous aftershocks rumble all the way through to a tragic denouement. Sensitive and thought-provoking, Gardens of Water is set in a perfectly realised Istanbul, a city where traditional and modernity grind together like the fragments of a collapsing building' New York Times Book Review

Alan Drew graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2004. His short fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train and elsewhere. He lived in Turkey for three years, and was there at the time of the 1999 earthquake. He lives and teaches in Cincinnati, USA.

Turkey, 1999. A devastating earthquake brings Istanbul crumbling to the ground, ripping apart the fragile stability of Sinan's world. His family home becomes a makeshift tent in a camp run by Western missionaries whom he stubbornly distrusts, and he soon finds himself struggling to protect his family's honour and values. As he becomes a helpless witness to his daughter's dangerous infatuation with a young American, Sinan takes a series of drastic decisions with unforeseeable consequences. Cultures clash, political and religious tensions mount, and Sinan's actions spiral into a powerful and heartbreaking conclusion.

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