Critically acclaimed Turkish novelist Elif Shafak’s second novel in English, THE FORTY RULES OF LOVE, a huge bestseller in her native Turkey, is lyrical, exuberant and sure to please fans of The Bastard of Istanbul, which was described by USA Today as a “Turkish version of The Joy Luck Club” and by The Nation as a “brave, ambitious book.”  

Deftly weaving two parallel narratives together, through employing the structure of a novel within a novel, THE FORTY RULES OF LOVE tells the story of an American housewife by the name of Ella Rubinstein who is trapped in an unhappy marriage. She takes a job as a reader for a literary agent and finds her life transformed after becoming engrossed in her first project: reading and reporting on a work of fiction describing the three year encounter (1244-1247) between the mystic Sufi poet Rumi and the controversial whirling dervish Shams of Tabriz. As Ella reads the manuscript (and the reader follows along with her), her relationship with the author -- a novelist by the name of Aziz Zahara, who lives in Holland -- soon begins to mirror that of Rumi and Shams.  

For Ella, the spirit of Shams lives in Zahara and as the two fall in love, she is guided not only by her own heart, but by Sham’s lessons, or rules, which are directly taken from the ancient philosophy of Sufism. The basis of Sufism is unity of all people and religions, and the presence of love in each and every one of us. As the fortieth rule states: “A life without love is of no account. Don’t ask yourself what kind of love you should seek, spiritual or material, divine or mundane, Eastern or Western…Love has no labels, no definitions. It is what it is.”  

Elif Shafak was born in France and spent her teenage years in Spain before returning to Turkey. She holds a Master of Science degree in Gender and Women’s Studies and earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from the Middle East Technical University. She has been a visiting scholar in the US and has been featured widely in the press both in the US and abroad. Shortly before the publication in America of her most recent novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, Shafak was brought to trial by nationalist lawyers in Turkey who accused her of insulting Turkish identity for comments that some of the fictional characters made in the book. The case attracted worldwide attention and she was eventually acquitted. She lives in Istanbul with her husband and two children.  Read The Independent (UK)’s interview with Shafak.