Elif Shafak once described Istanbul as a set of matryoshka dolls: a place where anything was possible. As with much of her previous work, that city plays a significant and shape-shifting role in this her 11th novel, where the Bosphorus, ‘waking from its turquoise sleep, yawned with force’ one November morning in 1990. It is ‘life at full blast’ — and yet the story’s beginning also marks an ending. A woman named Leila has just died, inside a wheelie bin on the outskirts of town.
‘Can’t you see, you moron?’ says the ringleader of the adolescent boys who discover her body. ‘She’s a whore.’ For a limited time, ‘Tequila Leila’, as she’s known to her friends and clients, will experience levels of cognition incredible to her, even while her organs begin to shut down. ‘Only a few hours ago she was singing, smoking, swearing, thinking… It was remarkable that her mind was working at full tilt — though who knew for how long.
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