A dazzling and intricate tale from the Booker-shortlisted author of The Island of Missing Trees, and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World.

'There were six of us: the master, the apprentices and the white elephant. We built everything together...'

Sixteenth-century Istanbul: a stowaway arrives in the city bearing an extraordinary gift for the Sultan. The boy is utterly alone in a foreign land, with no worldly possessions to his name except Chota, a rare white elephant destined for the palace menagerie.

So begins an epic adventure that will see young Jahan rise from lowly origins to the highest ranks of the Sultan's court. Along the way he will meet deceitful courtiers and false friends, gypsies, animal tamers, and the beautiful, mischievous Princess Mihrimah. He will journey on Chota's back to the furthest corners of the Sultan's kingdom and back again. And one day he will catch the eye of the royal architect, Sinan, a chance encounter destined to change Jahan's fortunes forever.

The Architect's Apprentice is a magical, sweeping tale of one boy and his elephant caught up in a world of wonder and danger.

'A gorgeous picture of a city teeming with secrets, intrigue and romance' The Times

'Exuberant, epic and comic, fantastical and realistic . . . like all good stories it conveys deeper meanings about human experience' Financial Times

'Fascinating. A vigorous evocation of the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power' Sunday Times

'Intricate, multi-layered, resplendent, vividly evoked, beautifully written' Observer

*** PRE-ORDER ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL IN ONE BRIEF MOMENT ALL ETERNITY NOW ***

WINNER OF THE WATERSTONES DEBUT PRIZE 2025
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2025
A RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME
A TELEGRAPH AND SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR

'A furiously romantic, sun-drenched mystery . . . The Artist will leave you yearning in every sense of the word' Yael van der Wouden, author of The Safekeep

'The Artist is a lush, impressive debut; the writing is rich and sensuous, especially in descriptions of food, the landscape and the act of creation. Lucy Steeds is one to watch' Sunday Times, BOOK OF THE YEAR

'Beautiful' Daily Telegraph, BOOK OF THE YEAR

'Dextrous and powerful . . . a hugely accomplished portrait of ambition and self-fulfilment' Guardian

'The year's most lauded debut novelist . . . A sultry, headily perfumed portrait of monstrous male egos and oppressed overlooked women . . . The Artist uncovers its secrets by stealth' Telegraph

'A blaze of a book, poetic, passionate and quietly powerful' Daily Mail

'This compelling, evocative debut will transport you to idyllic, sun-drenched Provence in 1920 . . . An absorbing, poetic read' Mail on Sunday

'Captivating . . . with imagery as lush as an oil painting' Washington Post

'Enthralling . . . the descriptions of the landscape, the meals they eat and the art created are so rich and evocative it's as if you're there' Good Housekeeping

PROVENCE, 1920

Ettie moves through the remote farmhouse, silently creating the conditions that make her uncle's artistic genius possible.

Joseph, an aspiring journalist, has been invited to the house. He believes he'll make his name by interviewing the reclusive painter, the great Edouard Tartuffe.

But everyone has their secrets. And, under the cover of darkness, Ettie has spent years cultivating hers.

Over this sweltering summer, everyone's true colours will be revealed.

Because Ettie is ready to be seen.
Even if it means setting her world on fire.

'Lucy Steeds transports the reader with her sensuous depictions of food, art, and landscape . . . an assured and atmospheric debut' Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent

'An intoxicating tale of creativity, possession and freedom. An impressively assured debut which asks questions about all those who are painted over by history' Joanna Quinn, author of The Whalebone Theatre

'I could not love this beautiful novel more . . . the final chapters left me with that delicious heart-bursting feeling, full of hope and delight' Florence Knapp, author of The Names

'Gorgeous . . . Steeped in the heat and atmosphere of 1920s Provence, this novel brims with intrigue, hope and yearning' Elizabeth Macneal, author of The Doll Factory and The Burial Plot

'Phenomenal . . . beautiful, pacey historical fiction, vividly realised. It drifts with the scent of summer, the land lit up and throbbing, the food piled high and richly painted, the paint as thick and buttery as food. I wanted to eat it. Yes, I even wanted to eat the paint. Read this book!' Seth Insua, author of Human, Animal

BEST BOOKS FOR 2025 from Stylist and Good Housekeeping

Read the searing first novel from the celebrated author of Beloved, which immerses us in the tragic, torn lives of a poor black family in post-Depression 1940s Ohio.

Unlovely and unloved, Pecola prays each night for blue eyes like those of her privileged white schoolfellows. At once intimate and expansive, unsparing in its truth-telling, The Bluest Eye shows how the past savagely defines the present. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison’s virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterised her writing.

‘She revealed the sins of her nation, while profoundly elevating its canon. She suffused the telling of blackness with beauty, whilst steering us away from the perils of the white gaze. That’s why she told her stories. And why we will never, ever stop reading them’ Afua Hirsch

‘Discovering a writer like Toni Morrison is rarest of pleasures’ Washington Post

‘When she arrived, with her first novel, The Bluest Eye, she immediately re-ordered the American literary landscape’ Ben Okri

Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction

'Simply written and highly memorable' Ireland on Sunday
'A subtle, calculatedly simple and ultimately moving story' Irish Times
'Stays ahead of its readers before delivering its killer-punch final pages' Independent
'A small wonder of a book . . . A particular historical moment, one that cannot be told too often' Guardian
'An extraordinary tale of friendship and the horrors of war...Raw literary talent at its best' Irish Independent
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What happens when innocence is confronted by monstrous evil?

Nine-year-old Bruno knows nothing of the Final Solution and the Holocaust. He is oblivious to the appalling cruelties being inflicted on the people of Europe by his country.All he knows is that he has been moved from a comfortable home in Berlin to a house in a desolate area where there is nothing to do and no-one to play with. Until he meets Shmuel, a boy who lives a strange parallel existence on the other side of the adjoining wire fence and who, like the other people there, wears a uniform of striped pyjamas.

Bruno's friendship with Shmuel will take him from innocence to revelation. And in exploring what he is unwittingly a part of, he will inevitably become subsumed by the terrible process.