The Map of Love: A Novel

With her first novel, In the Eye of the Sun, Ahdaf Soueif garnered comparisons to Tolstoy, Flaubert, & 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 & politics--both sexual & 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 & in love with Sharif Pasha al-Baroudi. Nearly a hundred years later, Isabel Parkman, a divorced American journalist & descendant of Anna & Sharif, has fallen in love with a gifted & difficult Egyptian-American conductor with his own passionate politics. In an attempt to understand her conflicting emotions & to discover the truth behind her heritage, Isabel, too, travels to Egypt, where she gradually unravels the story of Anna & Sharif's love. Joining the romance & intricate storytelling of A. S. Byatt's Possession with the lyrical sensuality of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, Ahdaf Soueif has once again created a mesmerizing tale of genuine eloquence & lasting importance. "Vivid, passionate & shedding, as true love does, a brilliant, revealing light on the world beyond itself."--The Sunday Telegraph (London) "Epic.... Soueif is at her most eloquent on the subject of her homeland, her prose rich with historical detail & debate. Ultimately, Egypt emerges as the true heroine of this novel." --The Independent (London). "Ahdaf Soueif has a talent for blending the personal & political & getting under the skin of each one of her characters." --The Independent on Sunday (London). "A magnificent work, reminiscent of Marquez & Allende in its breadth & confidence." --The Guardian "A bold & vibrant novel.... This is political fiction that is also unashamedly romantic... A triumphant achievement." --Penelope Lively, Literary Review.