10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World
The powerful Booker Prize-shortlisted novel from the bestselling author of The Island of Missing Trees
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4.2 • 49 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019
'Expect vibrant, vivid and eye-opening descriptions of Middle Eastern life propelled by a tender storyline, all in Shafak's haunting, beautiful and considered prose' Vanity Fair
'Incredibly sensuous and poetic and evocative' Pandora Sykes
'In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore. Her brain cells, having run out of blood, were now completely deprived of oxygen. But they did not shut down. Not right away...'
For Leila, each minute after her death brings a sensuous memory: the taste of spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the long-awaited birth of a son; the sight of bubbling vats of lemon and sugar which women use to wax their legs while men attend mosque; the scent of cardamom coffee that she shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each memory, too, recalls the friends Leila made at each key moment in her life – friends who are now desperately trying to find her. . .
'Simply magnificent, a truly captivating work of immense power and beauty, on the essence of life and its end' Philippe Sands
'Elif Shafak brings into the written realm what so many others want to leave outside. Spend more than ten minutes and 38 seconds in this world of the estranged. Shafak makes a new home for us in words' Colum McCann
'A rich, sensual novel... This is a novel that gives voice to the invisible, the untouchable, the abused and the damaged, weaving their painful songs into a thing of beauty.' Financial Times
'One of the best writers in the world today' Hanif Kureishi
*** ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, IS AVAILABLE NOW ***
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker Prize, this audacious, inventive novel by Shafak (Three Daughters of Eve) begins with the death of its protagonist and moves onward from there. An Istanbul prostitute known as "Tequila Leila" is murdered and her body thrown into a dumpster. Though her heart stops beating, her brain continues to function for the 10 minutes and 38 seconds of the title, as she is jolted back to the settings of her most graphic memories. Leila, it turns out, grew up in a rural Turkish town, where she was separated from her mother in infancy. Sexually abused by her uncle and threatened with an arranged marriage, teenage Leila took off to Istanbul, where the only work she could find was in the sex trade. Leila is a lively character, and her life, particularly in Istanbul, isn't unrelentingly bleak. The narrative opens up in surprising ways when Leila's five best friends, all outcasts like herself whose pasts are detailed in the book, decide to rescue her body from the "Cemetery of the Companionless," where it has been unceremoniously buried. This is a vividly realized and complicated portrait of a woman making a life for herself in grueling circumstances, and of the labyrinthine city in which she does so.
Customer Reviews
Countdown
3.5 stars
Author
British-Turkish, but she was born France. Go figure. PhD in political science. Has taught at universities in Turkey, the US and the UK. She’s the most widely read female author in Turkey. Writes in both Turkish and English. Widely translated. 17 published books, including 11 novels. Two-time TED Global speaker. Advocate for women's rights, LGBT rights and freedom of speech, which means she’s not flavour of the millennium with the current regime in Ankara. In 2017, she was chosen by Politico as one of the “twelve people who would make the world better,” except some of them were institutions not people. Her latest novel is short-listed for the Booker this year.
Premise
There’s detectable metabolic activity in human bodies for 10 minutes or so after the official point of death. What does the brain think about while it’s powering down?
Plot
The first section of the book (“The Mind”) counts down the minutes until a murdered Istanbul prostitute named Leila (aka Tequila Leila) copies Elvis and leaves the building for good. Each chapter recalls a specific time of her life, usually prompted by a sensation (smell, taste etc). In this way, the author paints a portrait of a member of the oldest profession and her relationship to a city that, if not the oldest, has a longer documented history than most. The second part (“The Body”) deals with more mundane matters: what happens to the corpses of individuals not entitled to a Muslim burial in a Muslim country. Nothing good basically, which gets up the nose of her close circle of friends, mostly co-workers. We find out about the perpetrators of the crime as well. Crimes, in fact. Leila is the 4th prostitute to bite the bullet in short order. Hint: Men are bastards. The third brief section (“The Soul”) details the efforts of the above-mentioned friends to set Leila’s spirit free.
Prose
Lyrical but powerful, as Ms Shafak explores some of her favourite themes (previously noted), along with friendship and her personal love affair with Istanbul.
Characters
Leila is keenly drawn; the supporting cast are sketches and caricatures in comparison.
Bottom line
Part One got five stars from me. Part Two started well but lost it’s way. This book promised much and delivered a considerable amount of it before drifting into a somewhat melodramatic conclusion. But that’s just me.