My Rating: 4/5
Last book of the year, as per my target, had to be a special one, and after reading my first from Elif Shafak (40 Rules of Love), I was totally in love with her writing. So this one was no exception, loved it, but not the way I liked the first one. I am sure this one lost a lot of its originality in translation, as it is a little disjointed and contradictory at times but that nothing takes away from a beautiful story of an innocent girl who becomes a prostitute in the city of Istanbul and then faces the ill fate of being killed and dumped in a trash bin right in the first chapter of the book. What follows is the ten minutes and 38 seconds of what she goes through once she is dead and her spirit leaves her body, her life flashes back to her in those 10 minutes and 38 seconds, and we, the reader, go through the lives of 5 of her favourite people and with her own life story till the very end. Starting from her birth to her death, the way those ten minutes and 38 seconds cover everything was totally amazing, the way that she has captured the entire story of Tequila Leila as she was named, her parents, life in the city of Van before she is forced to move to Istanbul and her five friends, part of which is fiction but so much of it was real too. What touched my heart was the ending of the story in the first chapter itself, yet my heart kept expecting a better life or a change of events for her, which, in the first place, was impossible to expect, if you know what I mean. Incredible story covered in mere 300-odd pages, but I am sure this will remain with me for a very long time to come. On top of that, this was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2019, a much-deserved accolade, I must say.
Have you read 10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in This Strange World? If not, you’ve got to read at the earliest, and I am looking forward to reading the other 15 books that she has written so far.
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