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Wednesday 12 June 2019

The Map of Love




by Ahdaf Soueif

Ahdaf Soueif is an Egyptian writer and a political and cultural commentator for the Guardian. She was educated in Egypt and England where she obtained a PHD in linguistics. Her sister Laila is a human and women’s rights activist. These points are mentioned because they helped us in the discussion of the book.

The Map of Love was written in 1999. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Price and was translated into 21 languages.

 It is he story of two love affairs set in Egypt. 
One takes place in the beginning of the 20th century. An English aristocratic widow, lady Anna, falls in love with an educated upper-class Egyptian nationalist. …..
The second love affair begins in 1997. Isabel, an American journalist, has inherited a trunk with many manuscripts from her mother, including letters and diaries from her great-grandmother, who happens to be lady Anna. Isabel meets Omar, a famous Egyptian-Palestinian conductor who puts her in touch with his sister Amal to help her understand the content of the trunk. Amal will become the link between Isabel’s past and her present: she will help her discover her past by translating most of the documents. 
And here the first love story repeats itself because Isabel in turn  falls in love with this Egyptian conductor 
Amal is the one who narrates the story . The two stories revolve around Egypt, its past, its political situation at the beginning of the century and again around 1997.

There are so many things to say about this book. 
For instance, the way the English considered all Egyptians, educated or not, as was the case of all colonizers of the time. The way they ignore Anna once she gets married to Sharif Pasha although he is from a very well respected old family.
The portrait of rigid Victorian society in conquered country is very well depicted as are the life style, habits and culture of the Egyptians.
Before falling in love with a man, Anna was already in love with Egypt, its art and its literature thanks to her father and her father-in-law from a first marriage. She rapidly gets bored and frustrated in the company of her expatriate companions and gradually takes sides with the Egyptians. She shows a remarkable “open-mindedness” for that time. In fact she  falls in love with Sharif because of the difference between west and east, because of the language, the culture. How do they connect? Their common language is French, a second language for both of them.  He learned French while studying in France and she knows French because it was an obligatory part of  education in  her class. 
Ahdaf Soueif is very interested in linguistics, in the formation and combination of Arabic words as I said before. She shows it very well in the conversations between Isabel and Amal or beforehand between Anna and her sister-in-law.
It was a good thing to have a family tree  to situate the different characters. There are so many flashbacks in the book that sometimes one gets confused concerning the time setting or the specific character.
The glossary at the end of the book is also helpful because it allows the author to give an exotic atmosphere to her story and to stay close to the realities of Egyptian life. 
We all thought it was a very good book with a nice romantic story and interesting cultural, social and historical background.

Paulette Duncan

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