Wandering through the Scents and Flavours to Collect Pieces of a Life in Elif Shafak’s 10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in this Strange World

Abstract

Abstract: Elif Shafak’s novel 10 minutes and 38 seconds in This Strange World (2019) is about Leyla Afife Kamile called Tequila Leila and her five extraordinary friends living in Istanbul. For 10 minutes and 38 seconds after her death, Leyla’s brain remains active fighting through fragrance-cued recalls to recollect and revisit significant moments from her past experiences and emotions. Hence, this research aims to examine how Leyla’s memories from different stages of her life were triggered by familiar aromas and olfactory cues in her last moments to save herself from being pulled up in the river of oblivion. To achieve the aim of the study, a close textual analysis of Shafak’s novel was conducted, focusing on passages where Leyla’s memories were triggered by olfactory. Equally, the language used to describe scents and the subsequent memories they evoke was examined. Shafak has skillfully succeded in creating a rich narrative about sensory and emotional experiences to reflect upon universal themes such as: life and death, belonging and displacement, memory and identity. Keywords: Elif Shafak; Memory; Olfaction; Textual Analysis.