Married to a wealthy promoter, Peri attends a grand dinner in a sumptuous villa on the Bosphorus. During the meal, everyone comments on the dramatic events that Turkey is going through as she thinks back to her youth, to the clash between her secular father and her very pious mother, then a student at Oxford between her two friends: Shirin, an emancipated Iranian , and Mona, a practicing Muslim and feminist. She also remembers her meeting with Azur, the flamboyant professor of philosophy who brought them together. This evening unlike any other will bring out the contradictions of today's women and the dead ends in which a society stuck between tradition and modernity struggles. Elif Shafak signs a violent satire of the Istanbul bourgeoisie as well as of religious fanaticism, equally blind to the aspirations of a youth in search of truth and freedom.
 Authors biography
 Elif Shafak is the author of ten critically acclaimed novels, including The Sultan's Architect, and The Bastard of Istanbul. Her work, for which she received the decoration of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, has been translated into fifty languages. She is an activist for women's rights, and regularly collaborates with international dailies such as The New York Times, The Guardian and La Republica.