Today I finished reading a novel that will remain with me for a very long time. In fact I think I could be as bold as to say that it will be one whose story will always stay within me.

What’s it about?

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 her 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 Yabriz, and his forty rules of life and love, she is ready to look at her lif 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 mesmerizing tale of discovery, language, truth and, of course, love itself.

The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak is just stunning. Reading it felt like watching a tapestry being woven, full of interlocking stories across time and continents. A picture slowly revealed and what remains is a sense of having experienced something unique, something beautiful. At it’s heart is a story about love – something that we all crave and yet when absent can leave a void that is impossible to fill with anything else.

The story begins with Ella Rubentein who for the last twenty years has devoted her life to her husband and children. She has been the steady hand working behind the scenes to enable them to be who they are and find their way in life. Suddenly she is turning 40 and beginning to question what her life has become. Her husband appreciates her but is regularly unfaithful, a matter that she never acknowledges. She rides it out and has a sad acceptance of the situation. Her children are approaching adulthood and she feels the separation between mother and child as they begin to find their own way. She is lost and wondering if there is more than the life she currently needs. She can feel herself slowly disappearing, feeling the sands of time running through her fingers.

She takes a job for a literary agency and is given a manuscript to read and report on. The manuscript is called Sweet Blasphemy by an unknown author, A.Z. Zahara. The manuscript tells the story of how Shams of Tabriz met and mentored distinguised Islamic scholar, Jalal ad-Din Rumi. Throughout the story we slip from Ella in 2008 and to Shams in the thirteenth century reading as Ella does, the story of how a single wandering dervish influenced one of the most famous poets known. Through the pages of Zahara’s novel, Ella begins to look at her life in a different way and perhaps even finds the courage to find herself again along the way.

There is so much wisdom throughout this book. I made many notes of passages that I know I will return to. It was a spellbinding read and one that has won a permanant place on my bookshelf so I can read it again. The Forty Rules of Love is my first book by this author and it has definitely left me hungry for more. Beautifully constructed and brought to conclusion with careful consideration to fill the reader with a sense of peace and hope. There was sadness, violence, ignorance but also great wisdom, joy and of course, love. A celebration of the power of love and the thirteenth century Sufi mystic and poet, Rumi and the poetry he created that continues to inspire to this very day. Highly recommended.

“If we embrace the universe as a whole, with all its differences and contadictions, everything will melt into one.” – The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak is published in the UK by Penguin Books and is one of the BBC’s ‘100 novels that shaped our world.’

You can follow author, Elif Shafak on substack : here

Thank you for taking the time to visit Tales Before Bedtime today. Please do come back again soon.

Happy reading!

Shelley