10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak
10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak
£8.99 – Paperback
It’s like nothing you’ve read before! On top of being beautifully written and displaying an original structure, you’ll find in 10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in This Strange World all the ingredients of a good novel: a well assorted pack of emotions, from acid humour to devastation; superbly well-built characters with their own personalities, lives and struggles; a richness of cultural tips and sensations; social and sex issues that will make you reflect. Elif Shafak gives voice to people who have lost their individuality, who have been turned into numbers, people with no name, rejected either by their families, their society, or both…
Time plays an essential part in this book (a whole life compressed in those ten odd minutes), and every chapter brings to mind a precise moment of Leila’s life, deep memories sparked off by an evocative smell, a flavour, a sound, with all the richness and exoticism of Istanbul’s atmosphere.
You’ll be hooked from the very beginning and won’t be able to stop reading, even through the hardest and most desperate bits. But don’t be misled, 10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in This Strange World is, essentially, a celebration of love, diversity and true friendship.
Carmen – Bookseller @ Coles Books
