Forty Rules of Love

Literary fiction · Fable

First published: 2009
Print length: 368 pagesPenguin Books, Limited, 2015

Description

At forty, Ella Rubenstein is unhappily married and begins working as a reader for a literary agent. Her first assignment is a novel about the thirteenth-century mystic Shams of Tabriz, his search for Rumi, and the transformation of a successful cleric into a mystical poet. As Ella reads, she recognizes parallels between Rumi’s story and her own life, while the manuscript’s author becomes a liberating influence. The novel interweaves this contemporary narrative with the story of Rumi’s encounter with Shams, whose teachings present love as a force connecting people and religions. Spanning seven centuries and different cultures, the two parallel stories place personal change beside a historic spiritual relationship.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Descriptive · Essayistic · Lyrical

Pace

Measured

Tone

Philosophical · Reflective · Romantic · Wistful

Structure

Braided · Dual timeline · Framed

Focus

Character · Ideas · Relationships

Emotional intensity

4 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 4 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

Art and creativityIdentityLoveMarriageReligion and faithTransformation

About Elif Şafak

Elif Şafak is a Turkish-British novelist and essayist who writes in Turkish and English. Her fiction often places private lives within contested histories, with particular attention to Istanbul, migration, women’s social roles, and the uneasy traffic between cultures. She favors layered structures, shifts of voice, and descriptive, lyrical prose that can make room for philosophical argument without leaving character behind. The Bastard of Istanbul builds its confrontation with the Armenian genocide through two families, using meals, quarrels, and withheld stories to show how public silence enters domestic life. In The Forty Rules of Love, alternating contemporary and thirteenth-century narratives connect a woman reading a manuscript with the transforming companionship of Rumi and Shams of Tabriz. Her experiments with perspective are especially visible in 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, where a dead woman’s final minutes unfold through sensory memories while her friends search for her, and in The Island of Missing Trees, where a fig tree observes a family divided between Cyprus and London.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Penguin Books, Limited
Language: English
ISBN: 9780241972939

Keep your books and notes in Collected for iPhone.

Apple Books is a service mark of Apple Inc. iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.