10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

Elif Shafak · b. 1971 · Turkey / UK

Why it matters

In the minutes after her murder, an Istanbul sex worker's mind replays her life memory by memory while her friends race across the city to claim her body. Shafak's Booker-shortlisted elegy for the women a society discards.

At a glance

A fragmented memory structure and a large ensemble cast, told in accessible, propulsive prose.