The Map of Love - Hardcover

Soueif, Ahdaf

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747543674 ISBN 13: 9780747543671

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 1999

Synopsis

"The Map of Love" is the story of two intricately intertwined stories separated by a hundred years of history. Lady Anna Winterbourne, recently widowed, travels to Egypt in 1900 where she meets Sharif Pasha al-Barudi, an Egyptian Nationalist, high-born and utterly committed to his country's cause. For Sharif, Anna at first represents the pseudo-benign snobberies of colonialist Britain. For her, Sharif represents the real, secret Egypt. The couple fall in love and marry, but fearfully. Can Anna really turn herself into an Oriental wife? Can Sharif adjust to Anna's Englishness? And will the real world, the unloving world of history and politics, give them a chance to try?These questions have a powerful significance for the heroine of the book's second story: Isabel Parkman, an American divorcee and a descendant of Anna and Sharif. In 1997, Isabel meets and falls in love with Omar-al-Ghamrawi, a New York-based Egyptian who also has blood links to the Anna-Sharif marriage. Isabel decides to make a trip to Egypt, looking for answers to questions she has scarcely framed yet. She carries with her an old family trunk, which she delivers to Omar's sister Amal in Cairo. In the trunk are the notebooks and journals in which Anna confided the story of her love affair with Sharif and with Egypt. As Isabel, with Amal's help, pieces together the story of Anna's relationship, she finds that it has far more to do with her own than she had realized.Ahdaf Soueif's triumph in this subtle, wise and moving novel is two-fold: she unerringly illuminates the historical and political intensities that govern even the most personal relationships, but she also makes us understand that "what will survive of usis love". This is a heart-piercing story of two love affairs: one fiercely up-to-date, the other long-ago but no less passionate. It is a story of Empire, of Egypt, a story of the century captured in compelling close-up.

About this title

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, and troubled, history of modern Egypt. The story begins in New York, in 1997: Isabel Parkman discovers an old trunk full of documents--some in English, some in Arabic--in her dying mother's apartment. Omar-al- Ghamrawi, a man with whom she is falling in love, directs her to his sister, Amal, in Cairo. Together the two women begin to uncover the stories embedded in the journal of Lady Anna Winterbourne (who travels to Egypt in 1900 and falls in love with Sharif Pasha al- Barudi, an Egyptian Nationalist) and the unsuspected connections between their own families. British colonialism, Egyptian nationalism, the clash of cultures in the Middle East in 1900 and the present day: the different narratives of The Map of Love weave a subtle, and reflective, tale of love across culture and conflict--the ways in which relations between individuals may (or may not) make the difference. "I am in an English autumn in 1897 and Anna's troubled heart lies open before me": Amal's response to Anna Winterbourne's journal could be a description of how to read this fascinating book, its invitation to use words as a means to travel through time, space and identity. --Vicky Lebeau

Review

'A page-turning holiday read.' -- Daily Telegraph

'A triumphant achievement.' -- Literary Review

'A vivid and passionate love story.' -- Sunday Telegraph

'Magnificent...Reminiscent of Marquez and Allende.' -- Guardian

'Rich with historical detail and debate. Egypt emerges as the true heroine of this novel.' -- Independent

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0747543674
• ISBN 13: 9780747543671
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 520