The international bestseller from the author of the Booker-shortlisted novel 10 Minutes 38
Seconds in this Strange World The Forty Rules of Love is part of our Penguin Essentials series
which spotlights the very best of our modern classics *One of the BBC's '100 Novels That
Shaped the World'* "Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation.
If we are the same person before and after we loved that means we haven't loved enough..."
Ella Rubinstein has a husband three teenage children and a pleasant home. Everything that
should make her confident and fulfilled. Yet there is an emptiness at the heart of Ella's life
- an emptiness once filled by love. So when Ella reads a manuscript about the
thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi and his mentor Shams of Tabriz and his forty rules of life
and love she is ready to look at her life anew. Compelled to embrace change she embarks on a
journey to meet the mysterious author. It is a quest infused with Sufi mysticism and verse
taking Ella and us into a faraway world where faith and doubt are heartbreakingly explored. The
Forty Rules of Love is a mesmerising tale of discovery language truth and of course love
itself. 'The past and present fit together beautifully in a passionate defence of passion
itself' The Times 'Colourfully woven and beguilingly intelligent' Daily Telegraph ***
ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW NOVEL THERE ARE RIVERS IN THE SKY IS AVAILABLE NOW ***
