 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 Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary award conferred each year for the best novel written in the English language, which was published in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The winner of the Booker Prize receives international publicity which usually leads to a sales boost. When the prize was created, only novels written by Commonwealth, Irish, and South African citizens were eligible to receive the prize; in 2014 it was widened to any English-language novel—a change that proved controversial.
Elif Shafak is a Turkish-British novelist, essayist, public speaker, political scientist and activist.
Nadeem Aslam FRSL is a British Pakistani novelist. His debut novel, Season of the Rainbirds, won the Betty Trask and the Author's Club First Novel Award. His critically acclaimed second novel Maps for Lost Lovers won Encore Award and Kiriyama Prize; it was shortlisted for International Dublin Literary Award, among others. Colm Tóibín described him as "one of the most exciting and serious British novelists writing now".
The Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize is an annual literary award given by the Royal Society of Literature. The £10,000 award is for a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry that evokes the "spirit of a place", and is written by someone who is a citizen of or who has been resident in the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.
Tishani Doshi FRSL is an Indian poet, journalist and dancer based in Chennai. In 2006 she won the Forward Prize for her debut poetry book Countries of the Body. Her poetry book A God at the Door has been shortlisted for the 2021 Forward Prize under best poetry collection category. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023.
Aminatta Forna, OBE, is a Scottish and Sierra Leonean writer. She is the author of a memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest, and four novels: Ancestor Stones (2006), The Memory of Love (2010), The Hired Man (2013) and Happiness (2018). Her novel The Memory of Love was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for "Best Book" in 2011, and was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Forna is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and was, until recently, Sterling Brown Distinguished Visiting professor at Williams College in Massachusetts. She is currently Director and Lannan Foundation Chair of Poetics of the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice at Georgetown University.
The Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction is a British literary award founded in 2010. At £25,000, it is one of the largest literary awards in the UK. The award was created by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, whose ancestors were closely linked to Scottish author Sir Walter Scott, who is generally considered the originator of historical fiction with the novel Waverley in 1814.
NoViolet Bulawayo is the pen name of Elizabeth Zandile Tshele, a Zimbabwean author. In 2012, the National Book Foundation named her a "5 under 35" honoree. She was named one of the Top 100 most influential Africans by New African magazine in 2014. Her debut novel, We Need New Names, was shortlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize, and her second novel, Glory, was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, making her "the first Black African woman to appear on the Booker list twice".
Donal Ryan is an Irish writer. He has published six novels and one short story collection. In 2016, novelist and playwright Sebastian Barry described Ryan in The Guardian newspaper as "the king of the new wave of Irish writers". All of his novels have been number one bestsellers in Ireland.
Claire Fuller is an English author. She won the 2015 Desmond Elliott Prize for her first novel, Our Endless Numbered Days, the BBC Opening Lines Short Story Competition in 2014, and the Royal Academy & Pin Drop Short Story Award in 2016. Her second novel, Swimming Lessons, was shortlisted for the 2018 Royal Society of Literature Encore Award. Bitter Orange, her third, was nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award. Her most recent novel, Unsettled Ground, won the Costa Book Awards Novel Award 2021 and was shortlisted for the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction
The Forty Rules of Love is a novel written by the Turkish author Elif Shafak, Her interest in writing this book was influenced by the degree she received in Gender and Women’s Studies. The book was published in March 2009. It is about Maulana Jalal-Ud-Din, known as Rumi and his companion Shams Tabrizi. This book explains how Shams transformed a scholar into a Sufi (mystic) through love. More than 750,000 copies of this book were sold in Turkey and France.
Three Daughters of Eve is a 2016 novel by Turkish writer Elif Safak. In many places, the book was recalled and retitled Confused Quest. The book centres on a wealthy, middle-aged housewife, her childhood in Istanbul and her time as a student at Oxford University where she fell in love with a philosophy professor. It focuses on her categorizing her identity. The book was featured on several lists of "best books" in 2018.
Martha Sprackland (born 1988) is a British writer.
Cressida Connolly FRSL is an English novelist, biographer, journalist and critic. She is also the mother of English actress Nell Hudson.
Cal Flyn is a Scottish author and journalist.
Lea Ypi is an Albanian author and academic. She is a professor of political theory at the London School of Economics. In 2022, she was named one of the world's top ten thinkers by the British magazine Prospect and one of the most important cultural figures by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Her work has been translated in 27 languages. She is a member of the jury of the Deutscher Memorial Prize.
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.
Glory is the second novel of Zimbabwean author NoViolet Bulawayo. Published on 8 March 2022, Glory is a political satire inspired by George Orwell's novel Animal Farm. It is shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize which was announced on September 6, 2022.
The 2022 Booker Prize was a literary award given for the best English novel of the year. It was announced on 17 October 2022, during a ceremony hosted by Sophie Duker at the Roundhouse in London. The longlist was announced on 26 July 2022. The shortlist was announced on 6 September. Leila Mottley, at 20, was the youngest longlisted writer to date, and Alan Garner, at 87, the oldest. The majority of the 13 titles were from independent publishers. The prize was awarded to Shehan Karunatilaka for his novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, receiving £50,000. He is the second Sri Lankan to win the prize, after Michael Ondaatje.
The Architect's Apprentice is a 2013 historical fiction novel by Elif Shafak, set in the 16th century Ottoman Empire. Shafak originally wrote the novel in English and assisted its translation into Turkish. It follows the fictional life of Jahan, an elephant keeper to Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent who later becomes an apprentice of Mimar Sinan.