En la mesa del desayuno

Büyükada Island, Turkey, 2017. A family gathers to celebrate the centenary of their great-grandmother, the renowned artist Sirin Saka, but what was meant to be a heartwarming celebration transforms into an investigation into the past, both of the family and the country. At the Breakfast Table is a novel told from multiple perspectives: Selin's, Sirin's great-granddaughter; Nur's, the granddaughter; Sadık's, the butler; and Burak's, a journalist friend (and former lover) of Nur's, who has been invited by Fikret, the other grandson, to write an article praising their great-grandmother's artistic career. This polyphony allows the reader not only to delve more deeply into the different characters and their points of view, but also to journey back in time, into memory. In this way, a family secret is gradually revealed, one that, four generations later, continues to have repercussions. As she did in her previous novel, Scheherazade's Silence, Defne Suman intertwines the individual stories of her characters with that of Turkey. She again addresses the social amnesia imposed by the Turkish state regarding the events of the last century, in the context of the Russo-Turkish Wars and the tragic fate of the Rumi people. Younger generations suffer from this inherited amnesia and yearn to know the truth, like the descendants of Sirin Saka.