Love and Only Water
Cyprus

Love and Only Water

by Eva Asprakis

Summary

Can you be whole when your world is in halves?

Twenty-one-year-old Daniela travels from England to Cyprus in search of her roots and a stronger sense of identity. Staying at her grandparents’ home, she becomes increasingly aware of the pain her family carries from Turkey’s 1974 invasion of northern Cyprus. The island’s division is not merely political: it has shaped family memories, personal relationships, and the ways people understand their own histories.

When Daniela’s aunt invites her across the border for a picnic, Daniela unexpectedly encounters Beyza, her former girlfriend. Five years earlier, the two women had lived in London, sharing a connection that seemed possible beyond the boundaries of their cultural backgrounds. Now, with Daniela in the Greek Cypriot south and Beyza in the Turkish Cypriot north, their reunion forces them to confront the religious, cultural, and political differences that separate them.

As Daniela navigates her feelings for Beyza and the complicated history of her family, she begins to question what it means to belong to a place, a culture, or another person. Through the parallel divisions of a family and an island, Love and Only Water explores sexuality, cultural identity, inherited trauma, and the uncertainty of living between worlds.

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Eva Asprakis
Eva Asprakis

Eva Asprakis is a British-born novelist who has spent much of her adult life in Cyprus, where she continues to live and write. Born in London to an American mother and a British father, she grew up with a Cypriot stepfather who later adopted her. Her multicultural family background and personal connection to Cyprus have significantly influenced her writing. Asprakis’s novels explore complex family relationships, sexuality, womanhood, and the search for identity and belonging. Her debut, Love and Only Water, was published in September 2022. Her second novel, Thirty-Eight Days of Rain (2024), won the Ink Book Prize for Fiction, while her third novel, Ghost Flight (2025), received a 2025 International Impact Book Award. Her work frequently draws on Cyprus’s history and the experiences of people navigating cultural divisions and competing ideas of home.

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Published
2022
Author
Eva Asprakis