Reviewed by Carmela Ciuraru
In this appealing fable, Turkish author Elif Shafak toggles between characters from different times: a modern American housewife and a thirteenth-century poet.
Ella Rubinstein is unhappily married when she takes a job at a literary agency. There she finds a manuscript about the poet Rumi by a writer named Aziz Zahara. Zahara’s meditations on love enchant Ella, and the two begin a flirtatious correspondence: “Love came to Ella as suddenly and brusquely as if a stone had been hurled from out of nowhere into the tranquil pond of her life.”
The universal theme is the struggle between the rational mind and the aching heart. Shafak’s heroine yields to the latter and never looks back.
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Elif Shafak Performs at The Moth: PEN World Voices
Elif Shafak tells a story on the them “What Went Wrong?” at The Moth at PEN World Voices, part of the 2011 PEN World Voices Festival.
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May 10, 2011
by Rafia Zakaria
Motherhood is often imagined as a natural state for women, a return to some authentic self that is believed to lie at the core of every woman. In patriarchal ...
