Book review: The Forty Rules of Love

by Elif Shafak


In her lyrical novel, the forty rules of love published in 2010, the Turkish
author Elif Shafak enfolds two parallel narratives- one contemporary of a
discontented Massachusetts housewife, and the other set in the 13
th
century
when the Islamic preacher and theologian-poet Rumi encountered his spiritual
mentor, a wandering dervish known as Shams of Tabriz. Both stories together
incarnate Rumi's timeless message of love.
Shafak has written exactly this, called it Sweet Blasphemy and wrapped it
up inside a more digestible outer layer: like a sweet pastry with a very chewy
filling. Ella, "a non-practising Jew and an aspiring vegetarian", is hitting 40 and
has done well to get a job with a literary agency after many years as a
housewife. We may suspect a convenient plot device when the very first book
she is asked to read is the said Sweet Blasphemy, wherein Shams's "forty rules of
love" (love of God, that is) are carefully set out. This is didacticism thinly
disguised as fiction. The chapters about Ella read like a case study in a popular
psychology book ("she was satisfied to be a stay-at-home mom and grateful that
she and her husband could afford it"), while the Sufi doctrine of living in the
moment and moving ever closer to God may possibly appeal to those in search
of meaning in life. It's Eat, Pray, Love plus 37 more imperatives.


An American housewife is transformed by an intriguing manuscript about
the Sufi mystic poet Rumi. American housewife Ella Rubenstein a 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 a work of fiction
Sweet Blasphemy, by a man named Aziz Zahara. Zahara's novel, which is
told in many different voices, tells of Shams's search for Rumi and the
dervish's role in transforming the successful but unhappy cleric in a
committed mystic, passionate poet, and advocate of love. In the age of
deeply embedded bigotries and clashes, Rumi dared to break free of all
conventional rules, to stand for a universal spirituality and an innver-
oriented jihad, where the aim was to struggle against and prevail over one's
ego. Not everyone welcomed these ideas, however, and the powerful
spiritual bond between Rumi and Shams became the target of rumor,
slander, and attack.

Becoming increasingly mesmerized by this tale, and growing more distant
from her husband, Ella begins to question her protected, insular life and to
reach out to Aziz, who lives in Amsterdam. She is also taken with Shams's
lessons, or rules, which offer insight into an ancient philosophy based on
the unity of all peoples and religions, and the presence of love in each and
every one of us. As Ella reads on, she realizes that Rumi's story mirrors her
own and that Aziz-like Shams-has come to set her free, to transform her in
a way she never could have imagined.

The Forty Rules of Love brings together East and West, past and present,
to provide a compelling, dramatic, and exuberant account of how love
works in the world.
A fictionalized account of the 12th-century Islamic theologian-poet Rumi and
his relationship with the Sufi mystic Shams of Tabriz may not have immense
popular appeal. Bored housewife Ella feels stalled despite her gracious
suburban life in Northampton, New England. Her teenage children are
growing away from her; her husband is distant and unfaithful. Ella's new
job as reader for a publisher introduces her to Sufism through a
manuscript she is sent to read, and has life-changing consequences.
"Sweet Blasphemy", the novel she is sent to appraise, tells the story of a 13th-century
wandering Persian Sufi Dervish, Shams of Tabriz, and his inspirational relationship
with Rumi, the greatest poet of the Sufi canon. Rumi, a respected Koranic scholar,
was transformed through his love for Shams and was inspired to write the Masnavi, a
key Sufi tract which weaves Koranic analysis with poetry, parables of the everyday,
the mythic and miraculous. It was to beget Mevlevi Sufism, practised through poetry,
music and dance.
The Forty Rules of Love takes Sufism into blockbuster territory. It interweaves Ella's
quest to find love with Shams's and Rumi's quest for beatitude through friendship, as
told by a range of characters including Rumi's wife and sons: one of whom was to
assassinate Shams, the other to carry on his father's work. The narrative is racy, told
in first-person fragments, letters, emails and braided through with Shams's
theosophy as told through his 40 rules of love. Elif Shafak expounds a populist rather
than a scholarly Sufism, providing a vigourous and easily assimilable introduction to
Sufi thought.
Bold bestseller this may be, but there is attention to detail. Each chapter begins with
the letter "b". For Sufi mystics the secret of the Koran lies in the verse Al-Fatiha, the
essence of which is contained in the word bismilahirahmanirahim (in the name of
Allah, the Benevolent and Merciful), with the quintessence of the word in the dot
below the first Arabic letter, a dot that embodies the universe. Shams espouses
multiple readings of the Koran, and Shafak slips in two diametrically opposed
contemporary translations of the Al-Nisa, the Koranic verse which M H Shakir
interprets as justification for male subjugation of women - while Ahmed Ali translates
as a verse extolling respect for women.
Both the observant head-scarfed daughters of AKP, the Islamic party in government
in Turkey, and the secular offspring of past Kemalist regimes, are ardent fans of
Shafak's novel. Her engaging vision of a gentle non-judgmental Sufi path to Islam
that rejects religious fundamentalism and is accessible to all, from medieval drunks
and whores to 21st-century Scottish drifters and American housewives, has made the
novel a Turkish bestseller.
Challenging truisms of the fundamentalist Islamic orient and the consumerist Judeo-
Christian occident, the novel proposes Sufism as a quest for spirituality which can fill
the void at the heart of both. Shafak is a mercurial and often controversial writer, but
should she choose to continue in this spiritual vein, I have no doubt she will challenge
Paulo Coelho's dominance. With its timely, thought-provoking, feel-good message,
The Forty Rules of Love deserves to be a global publishing phenomenon.
Celebrated Turkish novelist Shafak (The Bastard of Istanbul ) serves up a
curious blend of mediocre hen lit and epic historical to underwhelming results.
In present-day Boston, dull suburban mother and cheated-on wife Ella
Rubinstein takes a job as a reader for a literary agent and becomes entranced
by Aziz Zahara, the author of a manuscript about the relationship between 13th-
century poet Rumi and Sufi mystic Shams that, for better or for worse, becomes
a story-within-a-story. Aziz and Ella strike up an e-mail relationship, largely
made up of Ella's midlife crisis and Aziz's philosophical replies. Meanwhile,
Aziz's novel,Sweet Blasphemy , is occasionally interesting but mostly dull,
weighed down by Rufi's and Shams's theological musings. Its better moments
concern tangential characters; Rumi's son, Aladdin, who is resentful of his
father's closeness to the mystic, and Rumi's adopted daughter, Kimya, whose
doomed marriage to Shams is touching in a way Ella's failed relationship with
her husband never manages. The rumblings against Shams reach a peak, and
Ella and Aziz finally meet, tying the story lines together into a readable, if not
enthralling, tale.
In The Forty Rules of Love, Elif Shafak has woven a wonderful tale of love and spiritual
longing, brilliantly exploring the universal desire for intimacy with another human
being, as well as with the divine. It is provocative in the best sense of that term, a rare
novel that succeed in illuminating the mystical aspects of daily existence, a novel of
intelligence as well as heart, with wisdom that infuses every page.
In The Forty Rules of Love, Elif Shafak has woven a wonderful tale of love and spiritual
longing. Moving effortlessly back and forth between demons and saints, modern life
and the thirteenth century, ordinary people and legendary souls, she does a brilliant
job of exploring the universal desire for intimacywith another human being, as well
as with the divine. Eminently readable, and provocative in the best sense of that term,
this is one of those rare novels that succeeds in illuminating the mystical aspects of
daily existence. Best of all, Shafak accomplishes that with a spiritually mature open-
mindedness that refuses easy answers and exclusivity. I admired this novel greatly for
its intelligence as well as its heart and for the wisdom that infuses every page.