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 trash at Bonbon Palace is stolen, a mysterious sequence of events unfolds that result in a soul-searching quest for truth. By turns comic and tragic, this is an outstandingly original novel driven by an overriding sense of social justice.

‘I didn’t say anything. I didn’t return his smiles. I looked at him in the wide mirror in front of where I was sitting. He grew uncomfortable and avoided my eyes. I hate those who think fat people are stupid.’