In vignettes that range from warm and nostalgic to brutally realistic, Elif Shafak, one of Turkey’s most prominent writers, tells the story of a woman who started life in 1947 as Leyla Afi fe Kamile, the daughter of an Islamic polygamist, and ended it in 1990 as Tequila Leila, one of Istanbul’s many murdered sex workers. As her body cools in a dumpster, Leila, exhibiting the “persistent brain activity in people who had just died,” recalls key moments. Triggered by a Proustian rush of smells and told in seemingly random order, the memories that surface in Leila’s final 10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in This Strange World (Bloomsbury, $27) describe her early years in a rural town, dominated by folklore and misogyny; her escape from abuse, an increasingly strict father, and an arranged marriage at age 16; testify to her strength and resilience; and, above all, celebrate the five friends who helped her survive on Istanbul’s unforgiving street of brothels. All as marginalized as Leila, what remains of this devoted group—the gifted son of a woman judged to be too independent, a trans woman, a Somali refugee, a Lebanese person of short stature, and the firebrand communist she marries—bands together to rescue Leila’s story from the anonymity of her body’s numbered grave in the cemetery of the companionless.