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The Forty Rules of Love

Name: The Forty Rules of Love
Price: 19.00 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Elif Shafak
ISBN: 9780143118527

Paperback $19.00

Published on Apr 26, 2011 | 368 Pages

Buy from Other Retailers:

$19.00

Published on Apr 26, 2011 | 368 Pages

Buy from Other Retailers:

In this lyrical, exuberant tale, acclaimed Turkish author Elif Shafak, author of The Island of Missing Trees (a Reese’s Book Club Pick), incarnates Rumi’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 Zahara’s tale of Shams of Tabriz’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.

The Forty Rules of Love unfolds two tantalizing parallel narratives—one contemporary and the other set in the thirteenth century, when Rumi encountered his spiritual mentor, Shams, the whirling dervish—that together explore the enduring power of Rumi’s work.

Praise for The Forty Rules of Love:

“Here’s a middle-aged love story and the inside story of one of history’s great friendships, and on top of all that, the story of the battle within medieval Islam between the conservatives and the Sufis… Laugh, cry, tear your hair out as you learn.”
—NPR.org

“A captivating and wise book . . . The tale of the fated meeting, spiritual companionship, and tragic parting of [Rumi and Shams of Tabriz] is beautifully recounted in The Forty Rules of Love. . . . Shafak draws on facts from Rumi’s and Sham’s biographies and brings them to life with deft storytelling.”
—Associated Press

“A gorgeous, jeweled, luxurious book . . . The past and the present fit together beautifully in a passionate defense of passion itself.”
—The Times (London)

“In this appealing fable, Turkish author Elif Shafak toggles between characters from different times: a modern American housewife and a thirteenth-century poet. . . . The universal theme is struggle between the rational mind and the aching heart. Shafak’s heroine yields to the latter and never looks back.”
—More magazine

Author

Elif Shafak

ELIF SHAFAK is an award-winning British-Turkish author of a dozen novels, including The Island of Missing Trees, which was short-listed for the Costa Novel Award, and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize. Her work has been translated into fifty-six languages. She holds a PhD in political science and has taught at universities in Turkey, the United States and the United Kingdom. She lives in London and is an honorary fellow at Oxford University.

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The Forty Rules of Love

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