10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak

Description

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World’ by Elif Shafak, a highly emotional novel that deals with memory, trauma, friendship, and the problem of social underclass in Turkey, is a haptic story wherein the last days of a female character’s life serve as a backdrop for the narration as her dying end occurs and her brain runs through all the memories. Thereby, an intense and poignant note gets added to human existence and resilience.

Summary
Title: 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World
Author: Elif Shafak

Genre/Category: Contemporary Fiction, Literary Fiction, Social Commentary, Psychological Fiction.

Plot Summary:

This novel starts with the body of Tequila Leila, an Istanbul sex worker, found murdered and discarded in a dumpster. The author claims that the title refers to the scientifically proved phenomenon that after the human body’s heart has stopped its beating, the human brain can work autonomously for about 10 minutes and 38 seconds. Within this short time frame, this novel flickers a light on the memories in the mind of Leila.
As her head assimilates these memories, Leila recounts key moments in her life-from childhood spent in a provincial Turkish town to an escape to the bustling city of Istanbul. The last ten minutes in real time correspond to every minute of these memories, loosely unfolding in a non-linear fashion.
This is the way those memories introduce the readers to Leila’s distressed growing up, the way she gets rejected by her conservative family and, gradually, into Istanbul’s marginalized underworld. The novel also is centered around her tight community of friends, outcasts of the society just like her and the way they seem to form a surrogate family in a hostile society.
The novel shifts to the desperate search of her friends to give her a proper burial as they highlight their bond and loyalty towards Leila even in death.