Book Review: The Forty Rules of Love

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What comes to your mind when you first read the title, “The Forty Rules of Love”? Maybe that this book is another romantic book describing a story of two people and 40 ways of describing love. Well, then you must be wrong.

I am sure you have always heard people saying, “Never judge a book by its cover.” This truly implies this book because this book is not the kind of book which tells you how to love. Rather this jewel of a book tells you how to live your life with love, with people you love, with people you not love.

Author: Elif Shafak

Book Name: The Forty Rules of Love

Category: Literary Fiction

Language: English

Image Source: We Heart It

About the Book

This book has multiple characters, every character describing a story individually but jointly. For starters, the main protagonist of the book is a woman named Ella Rubenstein, who is a married woman, a mother of three. 

Her husband David and she has been married for twenty years now and she feels that the spark that used to be there is no more in their marriage. Ella mostly lost interest in her marriage when she got to know that David is being slept with other women out there.

Ella got a job as a reader at a literary firm and her first assignment was to create a book named “Sweet Blasphemy” by Aziz. Z. Zahara. Given the events that were happening in her home, she was very sad and started reading the book to distract her mind. Lesser did she knew her life was about to change drastically.

Sweet blasphemy had so many characters that one would get confused in them, but then, every character had its own story but all pointing towards one direction, getting to know the true feeling of love.

The main protagonists of the book, Sweet Blasphemy was Shams of Tabriz and Rumi. The book was set in the early 1200s in a city named Konya describing Rumi as a teacher or master who gives preaching of the Quran to children. Rumi is worshipped like a God in Konya because of the high amount of knowledge that he has and also for the kind of human he is. He has two sons and a step wife. Despite having a sorted and luxurious life, Rumi always remains anxious. Anxious about a dream that he gets every night.

He always has a dream of a mysterious man that is hard to describe, but Rumi understood this much, that the man that comes to his dreams every night has some sort of direct connection with his future and he finally got to see that man.

Reading Sweet Blasphemy made Ella very curious about some facts so she wrote a mail to Aziz. Z. Zahara for some clarifications. To her surprise, Aziz replied.

One fine day, Rumi was strolling in the market on his horse when all of a sudden, his path was cut by a dervish, so calm and peaceful that Rumi had no other choice but to stay there and see that man. That dervish had bald and no eyebrows and he had some kind of tranquility on his face that made him very attractive.

Rumi was lost in his thoughts when instantly, that dervish who was actually Shams of Tabriz asked him a question that swept Rumi from his mind and at that very moment, Rumi understood that he is the mysterious man that comes to his dream every night.

After this encounter, Rumi took Shams to his home and both of them remained enclosed for forty days in the library. Actually, they were discussing those forty rules of life and love. Over these days, the friendship between Shams and Rumi became very strong and rumors started floating about Shams that he is not a man of character and that he is influencing Rumi into doing ‘horrible’ things which should not be done by a master or a man of value. (You will get to know about them when you will read the book.)

On another hand, in the present, Ella and Aziz were having some serious conversations via e-mails. Talking to Aziz made Ella happy. She felt delightful and shockingly, she felt a woman after so long. Aziz made Ella cherish herself and most importantly, Aziz was making Ella love herself. She started glowing again like she used to do before.

This book is filled with so many luxurious words that it will tempt you to read it again and again and that’s why it will be better if you yourself purchase this book and read what happens next because books like “The Forty Rules of Love” are supposed to be read by everyone and anyone.

Purchase this book at: The Forty Rules of Love

Written By – Anamika Malik