10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019

Summary

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

'Richly uplifting... truly beautiful writing' Nicola Sturgeon

'In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore...'

For Leila, each minute after her death recalls a sensuous memory: spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the birth of a yearned-for son; bubbling vats of lemon and sugar to wax women's legs while men are at prayer; the cardamom coffee she shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each fading memory brings back the friends she made in her bittersweet 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

'Elif Shafak's extraordinary 10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in this Strange World is a work of brutal beauty and consummate tenderness' Simon Schama

'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

'Haunting, moving, beautifully written. A masterpiece' Peter Frankopan

'Extraordinary' Guardian

'Life-affirming' Stylist


*** ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL, THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY, IS AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW ***

Reviews

  • A truly captivating work of immense power and beauty
    Philippe Sands

About the author

Elif Shafak

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish novelist whose work has been translated into fifty-five languages. The author of nineteen books, twelve of which are novels, she is a bestselling author in many countries around the world. Shafak's latest novel, The Island of Missing Trees, was a top ten Sunday Times bestseller, a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick and was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the Women's Prize. Her previous novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the RSL Ondaatje Prize; longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award; and chosen as Blackwell's Book of the Year. Her novel The Forty Rules of Love was chosen by the BBC as one of the 100 books that shaped our century. Shafak was awarded the Halldór Laxness International Literature Prize for her contribution to 'the renewal of the art of storytelling.'
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