The Map of Love

Recipient of both critical and commercial acclaim for her previous novels, Ahdaf Soueif's new novel is a story of what it is to be divided, poised between two lives. She explores the changing relationship between Egypt and Britain in the twentieth century and tells the compelling story of a doomed cross-cultural love affair, recreating the Romantic Hero of Byronic legend in an utterly original contemporary style. It is the year 1900, and a trip to Egypt marks a new beginning for the recently widowed Lady Anna Winterbourne. There she meets and falls in love with Sharif Pasha al-Barudi, an Egyptian Nationalist, a man utterly committed to his country's cause. For Sharif, Anna at first represents the snobberies and vulgarities of colonialist Britain. For her, Sharif stands for the real, secret Egypt - an Egypt entirely hidden from her incurious compatriots. The couple fall in love, but fearfully. Can they both adjust to the reality of love between such conflicting cultures? In 1997, Isabel Parkman, herself a recent divorcee and descendent of Anna and Sharif, meets and falls in love with Omar-al-Ghamrawi, a New York based Egyptian. In search of answers to questions she has scarcely framed, she travels to Egypt, carrying with her an old family trunk which she delivers to Omar's sister Amal, who lives in Cairo. As the tensions and dangers in contemporary Egypt build to a threatening climax, Amal unpacks the trunk and unravels from Anna's notebooks and diaries, the story of her love affair with Sharif and her love affair with Egypt a hundred years ago. Ahdaf Soueif subtly interweaves these two stories and unerringly locates the political and historical intensities that govern even the most personal relationships. This is a richly researched rendering of historical cross-currents, a story of Empire, of Egypt, and of love across the century.


Genre: Literary Fiction