In this lyrical exuberant follow-up to her novel The Bastard of Istanbul acclaimed Turkish
author Elif Shafak incarnates Rumi's timeless message of love The Forty Rules of Love unfolds
two tantalizing parallel narratives-one contemporary and the other set in the thirteenth
century when Rumi encountered his spiritual mentor the whirling dervish known as Shams of
Tabriz-that together explore the enduring power of Rumi's work. Ella Rubenstein is forty
years old and unhappily married when she takes a job as a reader for a literary agent. Her
first assignment is to read and report on Sweet Blasphemy a novel written by a man named Aziz
Zahara. Ella is mesmerized by his tale of Shams's search for Rumi and the dervish's role in
transforming the successful but unhappy cleric into a committed mystic passionate poet and
advocate of love. She is also taken with Shams's lessons or rules that offer insight into an
ancient philosophy based on the unity of all people and religions and the presence of love in
each and every one of us. As she reads on she realizes that Rumi's story mirrors her own and
that Zahara-like Shams-has come to set her free.
