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A review by ecruikshank
The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
5.0
“—and there, on the table under her bedroom window, lies the voice that has set her dreaming again. Fragments of a life lived a long, long time ago. Across a hundred years the woman’s voice speaks to her—so clearly that she cannot believe it is not possible to pick up her pen and answer.”
THE MAP OF LOVE is a gorgeously written multigenerational family saga set in parallel timelines. (If that’s not sufficient bookish catnip, I don’t know what to tell you.)
Amal and Isabel are distant cousins who discover a trunk filled with artifacts from Isabel’s great-grandmother Anna and begin piecing together Anna’s story through her diaries and letters. A century earlier, the recently widowed Lady Anna has traveled to Egypt to explore a world she has previously admired only through paintings and her father-in-law’s stories; she becomes enmeshed in Egyptian life while falling in love with Sharif Pasha, a respected and powerful Egyptian lawyer. Throughout the book, characters in both timelines influence and react to historical events and passionately debate the matters of the day.
Soueif is a brilliant writer. She lingers over the striking landscape and quotidian details of Cairo life, weaving the setting into a rich tapestry. I fell in love with the complex, fully realized characters—my initial Goodreads review was simply, “I would spend 500 more pages with this family.” Soueif brilliantly illustrates, on a micro and macro level, the challenges of attempting to understand another culture and the tragedy that can arise from the inability to perfectly translate across cultural divides. Issues of colonialism and imperialism are at the forefront of, and enhance, both timelines.
I have seen comparisons to The English Patient and Possession, both of which resonate with me. I am eager to pick up In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova, which seems to have a similar premise.
THE MAP OF LOVE is a gorgeously written multigenerational family saga set in parallel timelines. (If that’s not sufficient bookish catnip, I don’t know what to tell you.)
Amal and Isabel are distant cousins who discover a trunk filled with artifacts from Isabel’s great-grandmother Anna and begin piecing together Anna’s story through her diaries and letters. A century earlier, the recently widowed Lady Anna has traveled to Egypt to explore a world she has previously admired only through paintings and her father-in-law’s stories; she becomes enmeshed in Egyptian life while falling in love with Sharif Pasha, a respected and powerful Egyptian lawyer. Throughout the book, characters in both timelines influence and react to historical events and passionately debate the matters of the day.
Soueif is a brilliant writer. She lingers over the striking landscape and quotidian details of Cairo life, weaving the setting into a rich tapestry. I fell in love with the complex, fully realized characters—my initial Goodreads review was simply, “I would spend 500 more pages with this family.” Soueif brilliantly illustrates, on a micro and macro level, the challenges of attempting to understand another culture and the tragedy that can arise from the inability to perfectly translate across cultural divides. Issues of colonialism and imperialism are at the forefront of, and enhance, both timelines.
I have seen comparisons to The English Patient and Possession, both of which resonate with me. I am eager to pick up In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova, which seems to have a similar premise.