Şafak, Elif "10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World"

Şafak, Elif "10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World" - 2019

"Now he has again preceded me a little in parting from this strange world. This has no importance. For people like us who believe in physics, the separation between past, present and future has only the importance of an admittedly tenacious illusion." Albert Einstein upon the death of his closest friend, Michele Besso

This is my fifth novel by Elif Şafak and I have enjoyed them all tremendously. Well, as far as you can talk about enjoyment when reading about the murder of a woman.

We follow Leila from the minute of her birth until several minutes after her death and then her friends. We learn about the way she lived, how she ended up in her situation, how her friends found themselves in their situations. We hear about Istanbul and Leila's hometown Van in Eastern Anatolia, right near the border to Iran.

The idea that you can still be conscious several minutes after your death is something I had never heard of before. But this gives us an opportunity to get all aspects of Leila's life and death, that of her friends and how she met them. All of them social outcasts, they form their own kind of family and fight for it, even beyond death.

The book is divided into three parts, each of them different from the other but they all contribute to our understanding of the life.

In the first part, we read about Leila's thoughts in the first minutes after her death, she thinks about her family and her friends. All the memories are included in the story. In the second part, Leila is dead and we follow her friends who try to bury her somewhere decent. The third part is about Leila's soul.

This novel is extraordinary. An extraordinary book about an extraordinary woman in an extraordinary town.

Book Description:

"'In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore...'

For Leila, each minute after her death recalls a sensuous memory: spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the birth of a yearned-for son; bubbling vats of lemon and sugar to wax women's legs while men are at prayer; the cardamom coffee she shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each fading memory brings back the friends she made in her bittersweet life - friends who are now desperately trying to find her …

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World is an intensely powerful and richly evocative novel from one of the greatest storytellers of our time."

Şafak, Elif "The Island of Missing Trees"

Şafak, Elif "The Island of Missing Trees" - 2021

I have read several books by Elif Şafak. They all seem to be different but they are all fantastic.

In this one, we learn about Cyprus, about the people on this divided island. As an example we have Greek Kostas and Turkish Defne. They fall in love but - as usual in such cases - their love is forbidden.

But we don't just learn about the people and the circumstances that they have to live in, we also get told by a tree, a fig tree, how trees work, how they grow, how they communicate. They have a lot to tell. Fascinating. This part of the story reminded me a little of Elif Şafak's compatriot and my favourite book by Orhan Pamuk who is one of my favourite authors: My Name is Red. He also lets non-humans tell part of the story.

In any case, this is a fantastic story, very original, beautiful and heartbreaking. In the end we know that the island is not only missing its trees.

From the back cover:

"In 1974 , two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided Cyprus, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home, Nicosia. The tavern is the only place that Kostas, who is Greek, and Defne, who is Turkish, can meet in secret, hidden beneath the leaves of a fig-tree growing through the roof of the tavern. This tree will witness their hushed, happy meetings, and will be there when the war breaks out and the teenagers vanish.

Decades later in north London, sixteen-year-old Ada has never visited the island where her parents were born. She seeks to untangle years of her family’s silence, but the only connection she has to the land of her ancestors is a fig tree growing in the back garden of their home…"

Şafak, Elif "Three Daughters of Eve"

Şafak, Elif "Three Daughters of Eve" (Turkish: Havva'nın Üç Kızı) - 2016

My third book by this Turkish author whom I really like. This one talks about a Turkish woman who went to Oxford to study and then went back home to get married. The main topic in this book is the rights of Muslim women next to God and Turkish politics.

We learn about the differences in the cultures and the changes during her lifetime. We learn about friendship and what it means. A wonderful book. I love Elif Şafak's writing. It's amazing. I like her more with every book I read.

The author is one of the people who are able to build a bridge between the divided nations, help us understand each other. She knows about the problems, probably because of her own upbringing, and gives instigations to understand the other world better. I wish everyone would read at least one of her books.

From the back cover:

"Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground - an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor. A relic from a past - and a love - Peri had tried desperately to forget.

The photograph takes Peri back to Oxford University, as an eighteen year old sent abroad for the first time. To her dazzling, rebellious Professor and his life-changing course on God. To her home with her two best friends, Shirin and Mona, and their arguments about Islam and femininity. And finally, to the scandal that tore them all apart."

Şafak, Elif "The Forty Rules of Love"

Şafak, Elif "The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi" - 2001

We had a great discussion, not just because we all read the book but also because we had two members who could explain to us all the questions we had. Wonderful.

There are really two novels in this book. Ella, an American woman receives a script to be edited. It is about Rumi, a Muslim poet who lived in the 13th century. His poems are world famous.

We thought the story of Rumi was really fantastic, he teaches fate and love. The book made some of us both peaceful and tearful. We liked that it went through different stages, going from the present to the past, that it had many characters. We also liked that the author uses different narrators so you can see the events from different perspectives (always a favourite of mine). We have a chance to develop empathy.

We asked ourselves whether there was a political message. Can fiction be political? What does she want to tell us with this story?

There is something special to the original language of the book. Elif Şafak wrote it in English first, then translated it into Turkish and retranslated and rewrote it in English. It is a bestseller in Turkey, people like her, she is nice. Elif Şafak is a world person, international, she respects all cultures and religions, is interested in Sufism. The novel is fiction, even though Rumi and Shamz are real people. She uses all those vices to talk about the differences in the Islamic world, therefore it is such a good book for this day and age.

As already mentioned, we especially loved the inner part, the book in the book, not so much Ella's story. She seemed to us like a caricature of a housewife from the 40s. The "outer book" doesn't seem real, seemed like "Chick lit" to us, added to attract more readers.

Another little criticism about Elif Şafak. She is a wonderfully articulate intelligent woman but her usuing Americanism in the 13th century was a little disturbing.

Some of my favourite quotes of the novel:  
"'The sharia is like a candle', said Shams of Tabriz. 'It provides us with much valuable light. But let us not forget that a candle helps us to go from one place to another in the dark. If we forget where we are headed and instead concentrate on the candle, what good is it?'"
and "Each time I say good-bye to a place I like, I feel like I am leaving a part of me behind."

And a last remark by one of our members: "I think that if everyone just adopted one of the rules ... the world would be a better place!"

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"An American housewife is transformed by an intriguing manuscript about the Sufi mystic poet Rumi.

In this lyrical, exuberant follow-up to her 2007 novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, acclaimed Turkish author Elif Shafak unfolds two tantalizing parallel narratives- one contemporary and the other set in the thirteenth century, when Rumi encountered his spiritual mentor, the whirling dervish known as Shams of Tabriz-that together incarnate the poet's timeless message of love.

Ella Rubenstein is forty years old and unhappily married when she takes a job as a reader for a literary agent. Her first assignment is to read and report on Sweet Blasphemy, a novel written by a man named Aziz Zahara. Ella is mesmerized by his tale of Shams's search for Rumi and the dervish's role in transforming the successful but unhappy cleric into a committed mystic, passionate poet, and advocate of love. She is also taken with Shams's lessons, or rules, that offer insight into an ancient philosophy based on the unity of all people and religions, and the presence of love in each and every one of us. As she reads on, she realizes that Rumi's story mir­rors her own and that Zahara - like Shams - has come to set her free."

You may also want to read "Araf aka The Saint of Incipient Insanities" (Araf)

We discussed this in our international book club in February 2012.

Şafak, Elif "Araf"

Şafak, Elif "Araf aka The Saint of Incipient Insanities" (Turkish: Araf) - 2004

A suggestion by one of our Turkish members, a book about foreigners living in the United States. We wanted to read this, alas the original English edition was sold out. We could only get the novel in Turkish, German or Dutch. I was lucky to find a used German copy and started reading.

An interesting book. Three roommates from Turkey, Morocco and Spain in Boston, one has  a Mexican-American, another an American girlfriend. All of them have to fit into the society they are in, they struggle in their own different ways. The author managed to describe these diverse characters in such a way that you could feel with them. I loved the way the various stereotypes and prejudices were dealt with, or not.

Anyway, great read, quite humorous at times but definitely a good way of describing the way someone wants to fit into their surroundings, belong somewhere. A wonderful story about friendship, as well. I am glad I read it, even though we had to strike it from our reading list.

From the back cover:

"The Saint of Incipient Insanities is the comic and heartbreaking story of a group of twenty-something friends, and their never-ending quest for fulfillment.

Omer, Abed and Piyu are roommates, foreigners all recently arrived in the United States. Omer, from Istanbul, is a Ph.D. student in political science who adapts quickly to his new home, and falls in love with the bisexual, suicidal, intellectual chocolate maker Gail. Gail is American yet feels utterly displaced in her homeland and moves from one obsession to another in an effort to find solid ground. Abed pursues a degree in biotechnology, worries about Omer's unruly ways, his mother's unexpected visit, and stereotypes of Arabs in America; he struggles to maintain a connection with his girlfriend back home in Morocco. Piyu is a Spaniard, who is studying to be a dentist in spite of his fear of sharp objects, and is baffled by the many relatives of his Mexican-American girlfriend, Algre, and in many ways by Algre herself.

Keenly insightful and sharply humorous, The Saint of Incipient Insanities is a vibrant exploration of love, friendship, culture, nationality, exile and belonging."

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2024.

In Feburary 2011, we also read "The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi" by Elif Şafak.