Content Warning: This guide section contains discussions of substance misuse and the loss of a child.

Nazperi “Peri” Nalbantoğlu is the protagonist of the book and the character through whose perspective the story unfolds. As the book opens, Peri is married to an older Turkish man, Adnan, and settled in Istanbul, where she lives a domestic life as a mother to three. She was born and raised in Istanbul and is the youngest of three siblings. She spent some time abroad when she was a university student at Oxford.

Peri’s defining quality is her confusion, and she embodies the theme of Navigating Conflict About Belief and Faith. Having grown up in a household divided on faith and belief, Peri constantly found herself caught in the middle of her mother’s religiosity and her father’s skepticism. Peri’s inherent tendency to avoid conflict or confrontation of any kind causes her to be perpetually stuck in the middle, unable to openly take a side. However, her attempts to avoid external conflict lead her to internalize the confusion instead, and she carries this with her to Oxford. Thus, when faced with the repeating questions of faith and belief in her equation with Shirin and Mona, Peri is forced to contend with this internal conflict through her exploration of God in Azur’s seminar.