{"id":12387,"date":"2011-05-07T11:08:57","date_gmt":"2011-05-07T15:08:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookdragon.si.edu\/?p=12387"},"modified":"2014-05-17T16:19:23","modified_gmt":"2014-05-17T20:19:23","slug":"the-map-of-love-by-ahdaf-soueif","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-map-of-love-by-ahdaf-soueif\/","title":{"rendered":"The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2011\/05\/Map-of-Love.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-28207\" src=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2011\/05\/Map-of-Love.jpg\" alt=\"Map of Love\" width=\"324\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a>If, like me, you don&#8217;t like to know the whole story\u00a0<em>before you read the book<\/em>\u00a0(!!), then skip the family tree in these opening pages. Don&#8217;t even glance at it. You can always go back to it <em>after<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ahdafsoueif.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Ahdaf Soueif<\/a>&#8216;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.themanbookerprize.com\/booker-prize-1999\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">1999 Booker Prize shortlister<\/a>\u00a0(J. M. Coetzee took his second Booker with <em>Disgrace<\/em>\u00a0that year) is a cross-cultural, cross-historical, cross-generational saga about two pairs of lovers a century apart. While <em>Map\u00a0<\/em>traverses time, the story&#8217;s &#8216;now&#8217; is 1997 Egypt &#8230; pre-9\/11, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tahrir_Square\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">pre-Tahrir Square<\/a>\u00a0which, read in\u00a02011, adds another compelling layer to its already epic scope.<\/p>\n<p>Soueif makes the intriguing choice to narrate the lovers&#8217; courtships\u00a0with a fifth, omniscient voice: Amal, recently separated from her British husband, leaves her London life to return to her native Egypt. At the behest of\u00a0her world-famous, globe-trotting conductor brother &#8216;Omar, Amal\u00a0is visited by Isabel, an American journalist from New York. Isabel arrives with a large trunk filled with letters, diaries, artifacts, memories that once belonged to a bold Englishwoman, Lady Anna Winterbourne, who outlived her own riveting love story.<\/p>\n<p>Just before the turn of the 20th century,\u00a0Lady Anna arrived in Cairo as a grieving widow, a member of the British elite in colonial Egypt. Unwilling to accept the limitations of being female, she donned men&#8217;s clothing to expand her explorations. Her independence led to mistaken abduction, which surprisingly led her to the gallant (and powerful)\u00a0Sharif, the love of her life. The remnants of her Egyptian adventures preserved in that leather trunk will bring together her great-granddaughter Isabel with her beloved &#8216;Omar.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;[T]his is not my story,&#8221; Amal insists, and yet she immediately recognizes both pairs of lovers: &#8220;&#8230; if I come into [the story] at all, it is only as my own grandmother did a hundred years ago, when she told the story of her brother&#8217;s love.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The core of Soueif&#8217;s novel is undoubtedly Anna and Sharif&#8217;s defiant relationship, which Soueif infuses with captivating details,\u00a0judiciously\u00a0revealed to keep the reader turning the pages. Her attempts, however, to weave in the politics then and now, feel clumsily intrusive. Without minimizing the grave importance of historical context\u00a0\u2013 Anna and Sharif&#8217;s love story surely would not have been nearly as memorable without the tumultuous political backdrop\u00a0\u2013 the combination of politics and romance stalls more often than not. That said, &#8220;unpacked, unwrapped, unravelled&#8221; through Amal&#8217;s fifth lens,\u00a0Anna and Sharif\u00a0and Isabel and &#8216;Omar prove to be an enigmatic foursome.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n<p><strong>Published<\/strong>: 1999<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If, like me, you don&#8217;t like to know the whole story\u00a0before you read the book\u00a0(!!), then skip the family tree in these opening pages. Don&#8217;t even glance at it. You can always go back to it after. Ahdaf Soueif&#8216;s 1999 Booker Prize shortlister\u00a0(J. M. Coetzee&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,503,504,6],"tags":[1998,6608,10,24,13,1999,28],"class_list":["post-12387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-arab","category-egyptian","category-fiction","tag-ahdaf-soueif","tag-bookdragon","tag-family","tag-historical","tag-love","tag-map-of-love","tag-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.14 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-map-of-love-by-ahdaf-soueif\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If, like me, you don&#8217;t like to know the whole story\u00a0before you read the book\u00a0(!!), then skip the family tree in these opening pages. Don&#8217;t even glance at it. You can always go back to it after. Ahdaf Soueif&#8216;s 1999 Booker Prize shortlister\u00a0(J. M. Coetzee...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-map-of-love-by-ahdaf-soueif\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-05-07T15:08:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-05-17T20:19:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2011\/05\/Map-of-Love.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"324\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@SmithsonianAPA\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif - BookDragon","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-map-of-love-by-ahdaf-soueif\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif - BookDragon","og_description":"If, like me, you don&#8217;t like to know the whole story\u00a0before you read the book\u00a0(!!), then skip the family tree in these opening pages. Don&#8217;t even glance at it. You can always go back to it after. Ahdaf Soueif&#8216;s 1999 Booker Prize shortlister\u00a0(J. M. Coetzee...","og_url":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-map-of-love-by-ahdaf-soueif\/","og_site_name":"BookDragon","article_published_time":"2011-05-07T15:08:57+00:00","article_modified_time":"2014-05-17T20:19:23+00:00","og_image":[{"width":324,"height":500,"url":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2011\/05\/Map-of-Love.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@SmithsonianAPA","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-map-of-love-by-ahdaf-soueif\/","url":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-map-of-love-by-ahdaf-soueif\/","name":"The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif - BookDragon","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-05-07T15:08:57+00:00","dateModified":"2014-05-17T20:19:23+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/#\/schema\/person\/a00f6dcfcb279c75f3f992ad2919d51d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-map-of-love-by-ahdaf-soueif\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-map-of-love-by-ahdaf-soueif\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/the-map-of-love-by-ahdaf-soueif\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/#website","url":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/","name":"BookDragon","description":"Books for the Diverse Reader","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/#\/schema\/person\/a00f6dcfcb279c75f3f992ad2919d51d","name":"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/79b5f08575e8962bd00388cd126d374b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/79b5f08575e8962bd00388cd126d374b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/twitter.com\/@SmithsonianAPA"],"url":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/author\/riemert\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12387"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12387"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28214,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12387\/revisions\/28214"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}