 First edition cover (Turkey) | |
| Author | Elif Shafak |
|---|---|
| Audio read by | Alix Dunmore [1] |
| Set in | Istanbul |
Publication date | 2019 [2] |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 311 |
| ISBN | 9780241293867 |
| 23 | |
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (Turkish : On Dakika Otuz Sekiz Saniye) is a 2019 novel by Turkish writer Elif Shafak and her eleventh overall. [3] It is a one-woman story about a sex worker in Istanbul. [4] [5] It was released by Viking Press in 2019.
10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in This Strange World opens in 1990 with "Tequila Leila", who is a prostitute. [6] [7] The story has her five outcast friends, who don't share a worthy importance in an illiberal country. [6] Leila enters the state of awareness in her last moments, after she has been murdered and left in a dumpster outside Istanbul. [8] "While the Turkish sun rises above her and her friends asleep soundly nearby, she contemplates her mortal existence before eternal rest." [8] In the last minutes she recalls her previous life; "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 the women use to wax their legs while the men attend mosque; the scent of cardamom coffee that Leila shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each memory, too, recalls the friends she made at each key moment in her life—friends who are now desperately trying to find her..." [9] [10] [11]
The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 600 Fellows, elected from among the best writers in any genre currently at work. Additionally, Honorary Fellows are chosen from those who have made a significant contribution to the advancement of literature, including publishers, agents, librarians, booksellers or producers. The society is a cultural tenant at London's Somerset House.
Elif Shafak is a Turkish-British novelist, essayist, public speaker, political scientist and activist.
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Free: Coming of Age at the End of History is a 2021 book by Lea Ypi published by Penguin Books. In the book, Ypi details her experience growing up before and after the fall of communism in Albania.
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