A luminous tale of a life flashing past at speed

FICTION: 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, By Elif Shafak (Viking) €21

Not long before she started writing this book, Elif Shafak’s beloved grandmother died, but the British-Turkish writer didn’t attend her funeral, not feeling comfortable to travel to her “motherland” when authorities were arresting writers, journalists and academics, some of them her friends, on “the most baseless charges”.

While 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World is not ostensibly ...