Product Description

Booker Prize Finalist

"Sweeping and evocative--. An unconventional love story."--The Times (London)

With her first novel, In the Eye of the Sun, Ahdaf Soueif garnered comparisons to Tolstoy, Flaubert, and George Eliot. In her latest novel, which was shortlisted for Britain's prestigious Booker Prize, she combines the romantic skill of the nineteenth-century novelists with a very modern sense of culture and politics--both sexual and international.

At either end of the twentieth century, two women fall in love with men outside their familiar worlds. In 1901, Anna Winterbourne, recently widowed, leaves England for Egypt, an outpost of the Empire roiling with nationalist sentiment. Far from the comfort of the British colony, she finds herself enraptured by the real Egypt and in love with Sharif Pasha al-Baroudi. Nearly a hundred years later, Isabel Parkman, a divorced American journalist and descendant of Anna and Sharif has fallen in love with Omar al-Ghamrawi, a gifted and difficult Egyptian-American conductor with his own passionate politics. In an attempt to understand her conflicting emotions and to discover the truth behind her heritage, Isabel, too, travels to Egypt, and enlists Omar's sister's help in unravelling the story of Anna and Sharif's love.

Joining the romance and intricate storytelling of A.S. Byatt's Possession and Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, Ahdaf Soueif has once again created a mesmerizing tale of genuine eloquence and lasting importance.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43431 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780385720113
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
Ahdaf Soueif's The Map of Love is a massive family saga, a story that draws its readers into two moments in the complex, troubled history of modern Egypt. The story begins in 1977 in New York. There Isabel Parkman discovers an old trunk full of documents--some in English, some in Arabic--in her dying mother's apartment. Incapable of deciphering this stash by herself, she turns to Omar al-Ghamrawi, a man with whom she is falling in love. And Omar directs her in turn to his sister Amal in Cairo.

Together the two women begin to uncover the stories embedded in the journal of Lady Anna Winterbourne, who traveled to Egypt in 1900 and fell in love with Sharif Pasha al-Barudi, an Egyptian nationalist. To their surprise, they stumble across some unsuspected connections between their own families. Less surprising, perhaps, is the persistence of the very same issues that dogged their ancestors: colonialism, Egyptian nationalism, and the clash of cultures throughout the Middle East. The past, however, does offer some semblance of omniscience:

That is the beauty of the past; there it lies on the table: journals, pictures, a candle-glass, a few books of history. You leave it and come back to it and it waits for you--unchanged. You can turn back the pages, look again at the beginning. You can leaf forward and know the end. And you tell the story that they, the people who lived it, could only tell in part.

With its multiple narratives and ever-shifting perspectives, The Map of Love would seem to cast some doubt on even the most confident historian's version of events. Yet this subtle and reflective tale of love does suggest that the relations between individuals can (sometimes) make a difference. "I am in an English autumn in 1897," Amal confesses at one point, "and Anna's troubled heart lies open before me." Here, perhaps, is a hint about how we should read Soueif's staggering novel, using words as a means to travel through time, space, and identity. --Vicky Lebeau

From Publishers Weekly
CoincidenceApersonal, political and culturalArules in this burnished, ultra-romantic Booker Prize finalist. In 1997, Isabel Parkman, a recently divorced American journalist, travels to Egypt to research about the impending millennium. But her interest in Egypt has more to do with her crush on Omar al-Ghamrawi, a passionate and difficult older Egyptian-American conductor and political writer, than with her work. Once in Egypt, Isabel neglects her project for a more personal investigation. Lugging with her a mysterious trunk of papers bequeathed to her by her mother, Isabel turns up at Omar's sister Amal's house in Cairo and explains that Omar had said she might be interested in translating the papers. As the two soon discover, Isabel is Amal's distant cousin, and the papers belonged to their mutual great-grandmother, Anna Winterbourne. As a young English widow, Anna traveled to turn-of-the-century Egypt, then an English colony, and fell in love with an Egyptian man. "I cannot help thinking that when she chose to step off the well-trodden paths of expatriate life, Anna must have secretly wanted something out of the ordinary to happen to her," muses Amal, who begins to realize that the same applies to her own life. Soueif (In the Eye of the Sun) writes simply and, on occasion, beautifully. Anna's journal entries are particularly evocative. Sticklers for narrative detail might chafe at the number of incredible coincidences, including a bizarre twist involving Isabel's mother and Omar, and forsaken plot devices (Isabel's millennium project is never mentioned after her arrival in Egypt). On balance, however, Soueif weaves the stories of three formidable women from vastly different times and countries into a single absorbing tale. 6-city author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
In parallel love stories set nearly 100 years apart, Soueif combines politics and romance in something of an eternal spiral connecting two families and two cultures. Isabel travels from New York to Cairo with a trunk containing diaries and possessions of her great-grandmother, Anna Winterbourne. Omar, a conductor of international fame (and the man Isabel loves), refers her to his sister Amal for help in understanding the contents. What he fails to tell her is that they are distant cousins: Sharif, the man who becomes Anna's husband, is Amal and Omar's great-uncle. And so, in turn, we learn of Anna's life and love for Sharif and her adopted country and of Isabel and Omar. Amal, the link between the two worlds, untangles the old story and entangles a new one. By juxtaposing the past with the present, the prejudices and politics are contrasted with each other and are shown to be remarkably similar. This, a very romantic book with Anna as its most interesting character, offers insights into both historic and modern Egypt. Danise Hoover
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Customer Reviews

A Book to be savored
I came across A Map of Love quite by accident. I knew nothing of the author and found myself totally entranced from the first paragraph. The first chapters were a little confusing until I was able to sort out who were the characters and who was the narrator. I found the writing style to be crystal clear and as smoothly flowing as a gentle streams luring you into its embrace. It is the story of a young English widow who goes to Egypt at the turn of the century and there meets the love of her life. The story is recounted by her great niece who at the same time interweaves the story of the family in the 1990's. It is skilfully done. Egyptian politics both at the turn of the century and today create an interesting and enlightning backdrop for the stories giving the reader an view not normally found in todays current events. I not only enjoyed the book but heartily recommend it, not only as a great love story but as an insightinto the private life of an Egyptian family.

Anna and the Basha
This book starts slowly, it's a wonderful read for the summer(the beach) or whenever you have the time to read it right through and to absorb the impact of a very proper English Lady (i.e. aristocrat) of the 19th century embracing an entirely new life and circumstances with the man she falls in love with, an Egyptian, who, being persona non grata with the British colonists, results in the same status being conveyed on her. It's not a romance novel, it's far more serious. It's about love in all its many facets, it's a contrast of life in the nineteenth, versus the late twentieth,century. I recommend it, it challenges conventional notions of life in Egypt, as well as giving background to Middle East politics from the inception of the twentieth century. Anna knew duty, and caring. What she had yearned for was love, and it found her, and alongside she gave, and received, love from her husband's mother (her belle-mere), his sister, and all their family. This book embraces the redeeming quality of love. The parallel contrast with her modern-day relative, Isabel, makes the reader pause and reflect. I read this after an extensive blitz on the Patrica Cornwell/Kay Scarpetta novels, which are addictive. The pace here is slower, the language more evocative and wordy. Let it transport you, Anna and her story will stay with you longer than Dr Scarpetta.

Anna's journals keep this alive...
Beginning with Fatima Mernissi, my favorite Muslim feminist, I love reading about the lives of women that are so different from mine - and usually, are more intense and more meaningful. Although a good friend who'd lived in Egypt said she had to force herself to get through some parts - I found this story to be gripping enough to hold me. Certainly the best parts are those from the diary and letters of the turn-of-the-century Englishwoman named Anna Winterbourne. After her young husband dies, Anna travels to Egypt, loves how different it is from her world, and eventually pulls away from the stuffy, closed-minded colonial community and falls in love with an older Egyptian nationalist (Sharif). Fast forward 95 years and find Isabel Parkman in New York City routing through her dying mother's things and finding a trunk full of what turn out to be Anna's documents. Because some of the documents are in Arabic she asks a man she is seeing, Omar (an unlikely international conductor) for assistance and he sends her to Cairo to his sister Amal. We learn soon enough that Isabel and Amal are cousins and the two of them begin to uncover the wonders of their ancestor's journal (and letters). Based in Egypt during unsettled times (both in the late 1890s and in the late 1990s) issues of nationalism and culture clashes are mirrored in both story lines. Soueif is much more powerful in her Egyptian characters and history and the relationship between Anna and Sharif is a pleasure to read. Sections of the book devoted to Isabel and her "issues" are considerably less enjoyable - but get through these because as the whole the book is a delightful family saga.