Who Wrote 10 Minutes 38 Seconds In This Strange World?

2025-10-27 18:32:35 128

7 Answers

Jordan
Jordan
2025-10-28 05:27:24
If you're asking me, '10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World' was written by Elif Shafak. She’s a Turkish-British novelist whose work often blends history, mysticism, and fierce social observation. This particular novel came out in 2019 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize that year, which is a neat way of saying it caught a lot of critical attention fast.

The book is framed around the last minutes of Leila, a sex worker in Istanbul, and how her memories unspool in the ten minutes and thirty-eight seconds after her body has failed. Shafak's prose slips easily between personal memory, city history, and political critique—so you get intimate portraits of friendship and trauma alongside vivid streetscape vignettes of Istanbul. It reads like a catalogue of lives that refuse to be forgotten, and Shafak's empathy for marginal characters is what pushes it from good to unforgettable. Personally, that blend of lyrical detail and sharp moral questioning hooked me; I found myself thinking about the friends Leila loved long after I closed the book.

If you haven’t read anything by her, you might like to follow this with 'The Forty Rules of Love' or 'The Bastard of Istanbul' to see how she moves between myth, faith, and modernity in different registers. For me, this novel still sits in the corner of my brain like a song you half-know but never stop humming.
Sawyer
Sawyer
2025-10-29 02:47:51
There’s a clear, bold voice behind '10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World'—Elif Shafak wrote it, and you can feel her compassion and outrage on every page. The story centers on Leila and the last moments of consciousness after her death, with memory acting like a bright, stubborn ember. Shafak wrote in English for this one, and the prose has that accessible lyricism that made it a Booker Prize shortlist pick in 2019.

I read it on a rainy afternoon and kept pausing to underline lines and then to stare at the window. What stuck with me was not just the setup—ten minutes and thirty-eight seconds of memory—but the constellation of friendships and city-ghosts that orbit Leila. Themes of exile, gendered violence, and communal care ripple through the chapters. If you enjoy character-driven novels that also interrogate history and place, this will likely resonate. My recommendation is to savor it slowly: it rewards a patient reader with images and small truths that linger, and I still find myself thinking about the scenes of meals shared in cramped rooms and the way memory reshapes the past.
Xander
Xander
2025-10-31 19:43:16
My take is a bit more pedantic and sentimental at once: the author of '10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World' is Elif Shafak, a novelist whose work I’ve followed for years. The book functions as both a narrative experiment and a humanist manifesto — Shafak collapses time into ten minutes of consciousness and uses that compression to interrogate memory, marginalization, and resilience. Reading it felt like being handed a handful of citynotes: Istanbul in all its smells, flavors, and social strata, told through the recollections of a woman whose life intersects with sex workers, refugees, and unlikely kinships.

Published in 2019, the novel drew wide acclaim and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, which signaled to many readers that this was not just a clever conceit but a deeply affecting piece of literature. Beyond the plot mechanics, Shafak’s deft use of sensory detail — tastes, songs, the touch of someone’s hand — made the experience visceral. I left the book thinking about how storytelling can be a kind of resurrection, and that’s a thought that stays with me when I reread sections.
Quinn
Quinn
2025-10-31 19:48:34
Short and sweet: '10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World' was written by Elif Shafak. I read it after hearing it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2019, and it lived up to the hype for me — the premise of the brain clinging to memory for a few minutes is handled with gorgeous, heartbreaking detail. Shafak uses those moments to map a whole life and a whole city, and the result is intimate and urgent. It’s one of those books that makes me want to revisit certain passages for the language alone, and that’s always a good sign to me.
Dominic
Dominic
2025-11-01 01:37:20
If you've been curious about that unforgettable title, the book '10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World' was written by Elif Shafak. I fell into this novel like a late-night binge: it's by a Turkish-British writer who crafts stories that ache with humanity and color. The premise — the last ten minutes and change of a woman's brain after death, where memories bloom like sensory fireworks — is handled with tenderness and political bite. Shafak set the novel in Istanbul and surrounded her protagonist with a found family of outsiders; the prose moves between brutal truths and moments of lyrical consolation.

I got hooked not only because of the structure (each memory arrives as a vivid sensory postcard) but because of the way Shafak threads history, gender politics, and social critique into personal recollection. The book was published in 2019 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize that year, which felt like a well-deserved spotlight. If you like books that mix social conscience with poetic storytelling — think warm, painful, and oddly hopeful — then Elif Shafak's voice here is something I still think about whenever I walk past crowded streets or late-night cafes.
Freya
Freya
2025-11-01 18:27:21
When I tell friends about '10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World' I always point to Elif Shafak as the author — she's the one who wrote that striking, sensory novel. I picked it up because of the premise: a woman's final minutes become a repository for memory, smell, taste, music, and friendship. Shafak, who writes in both English and Turkish, gives those ten minutes narrative weight; the book reads like a series of intimate vignettes that also double as social commentary. It was released in 2019 and even made the Booker Prize shortlist, which made me pay closer attention.

Beyond just that story, I like how Shafak's other works like 'The Forty Rules of Love' and 'The Bastard of Istanbul' have similar emotional reach — they mix history, spirituality, and politics in ways that stick. If you enjoy novels that are as much about the city and community as they are about the protagonist's inner life, this is a neat fit. Personally, it stayed with me for weeks afterward.
Nora
Nora
2025-11-02 15:05:02
Elif Shafak is the author of '10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World', a novel published in 2019 that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It’s a tightly wound exploration of memory, death, and marginal lives: the protagonist’s consciousness unspools for ten minutes and thirty-eight seconds after her body stops, and through that frame Shafak threads intimate backstories, friendships, and an evocative portrait of Istanbul. I admire how she balances political urgency with lyrical description—this book feels both tender and righteous. Reading it felt like being led through a city full of voices I hadn’t met before, and I came away impressed by her ability to make the overlooked feel essential, which is why this book has lingered with me.
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