By JUDITH MEYRICK

Sun, Nov 28, 2010

The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak (Viking, 368 pages)

Ella Rubenstein leads a middle class American life. Her days are defined by the needs and demands of her unfaithful husband, their three children and even her dog.

Looking for greater fulfillment, she becomes a reader for a publisher and her first assignment is to assess a manuscript by the mysterious Aziz Zahara.

Elif Shafak’s latest book, The Forty Rules of Love, draws her readers into the lives of Shams of Tabriz, a wandering Sufi Dervish, and Mawlana Jalal ad-Din, also known as Rumi.

Shams is sent by his order to Konya in Turkey to be a companion to the young Rumi, who is already a revered leader and scholar but dissatisfied with his spiritual progress.

The Forty Rules of Love moves back and forth in time, shifting from the gently unfolding affection between Ella and Aziz to the 13th century Persia of Zahara’s manuscript. Shafak weaves her 40 rules through these modern and ancient narratives, via emails, tales, parables and through the conversations and stories of the book’s many narrators.

These varied stories chronicle the deepening spiritual connection between Shams and Rumi.

It is a complicated literary structure, but Shafak holds her threads expertly as she lays out the inclusive and tolerant principles of Sufism as they relate to the popular culture of the times, in both the 13th and 21st centuries.

The Forty Rules of Love speaks directly to the heart.

Elif Shafak is an award-winning novelist and one of the most widely read writers in Turkey. She writes her books in both Turkish and English, and they have been translated into more than 40 languages.

She lives in Istanbul.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/Books/1214356.html