10 minutes 38 second in this strange world:- Book Review
Elif Shafak, a Turkish writer, storyteller, essayist, academic, public speaker, and women’s rights activist, was born on October 25 1971 in Strasbourg, France. She has almost published 17 books among 11 worth read novels, her books have been translated into 53 languages throughout the world. She is not only a writer but a member of many organizations as well.
The under-discussed book, 10 minutes 38 second in this strange world, is a masterpiece which is aver read by me, is an interesting story of a prostitute. The writer has elaborated the novel such that it takes readers to a strange world and keeps one imagining the story. I really appreciate this writer with her elaborations.
The story is of a prostitute girl who is recently assassinated and thrown in a garbage can, now she is recalling her fast life in her mind but her heart stopped beating, she is a prostitute in Istanbul who works in a brothel, namely, Tequila Leila, she was born in a Muslim family in Turkish city. Her father has married twice, one of his wives is infertile so Leila was the daughter of the second wife of her father, since she was given to the infertile wife because she was unable to bear any offspring. Leila’s mother was fertile, so she expected that she would be pregnant at any time, so agreed to sacrifice her daughter to the woman, by growing up Leila suffered the illusion of both loves.
Like other girl Leila was enrolled in school and had friends, once her real mother bears a child with Down Syndrome and later on he dies, so her father becomes more religious and tries to perform the religious activities at home, and keeps eye on Leila not to meet any boyfriend, but opposite gender always attracts one another, she becomes a friend of a boy but gets distracted by home environment.
On the contrary, her marriage comes which is decided by her father, which is against her will, during marriage ceremony she escapes from home and leaves for Istanbul, where meets an aunt who offers her to her brothel as a sex worker, after passing time she makes her own friends in the brothel and enjoys the life.
Suddenly, once it happens that she gets a male artist in a brothel than from that her life turns on another track, the boy is D/Ali who offers her to marry him, so their marriage occurs but on labor’s day her husband gets martyred and Leila pulls apart once again and she lives in an apartment with her friends.
Leila has five best friends who could dedicate their lives to her. The day she was assassinated, her friends were not informed where she was. She is found by labor of sanitary in a garbages and her body was handover to police for investigation, when her friends get informed then it was too late for them to get her body back from police, so her body gets buried in a cemetery companionless graveyard in the corner of the city. Her burial as a companionless was intolerable news for her friends, they could not digest this news.
Therefore, they decide to uncover her from the grave once again to be buried to a most particular grave in the city, so they do the same, but Leila wished she should be left in a sea instead of under five feet underground, when they take her from there, they come to an eye of police and they were followed by. They succeed in throwing her dead body but are caught by police.
Meanwhile, reading this book, I was amused by this, which took me to another world of imagination. I learned a lot in this book about true friendship, how real friends love one another like Leila was loved by them. Apart from this, this book is also connected to psychology and freedom of speech which is recommended to every student to read the book.