Review: 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World by Elif Shafak
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A sex worker in Istanbul has been murdered, and as her brain releases her life, the reader is transported to specific memories and stories. Her life is revealed alongside five close friends (like a Turkish cast of Rent) who play a bigger role in the second half of the story.

This is on the Man Booker Prize longlist for 2019, but I must say it isn't the best book I've read by this author. Still it is quite readable and is based on an interesting structure.

I had a review copy from the publisher through @netgalley which unfortunately removed all double "ff" and sometimes "ffi" as well as all numbers. This broke my momentum on reading the story every time. And at one point it completely removed the meaning of a street name that seemed important, and some back stories seemed connected to specific years, which I could not tell you the importance of at this point. Luckily I know quite a bit of Turkish history and culture because of my year of reading Turkey. So I do feel like I have a bit of an incomplete experience.

Thanks to the publisher for granting me access via NetGalley; the book comes out December 1, 2019 in the states but is already out in the UK.

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