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Book Review
May. 25th, 2005 06:04 pmThe Map of Love
by Adhaf Soueif
This novel is really two stories in one: the modern-day story of Isabel Parkman, her romance with Egyptian conductor and activist Omar al-Ghamrawi, and her resulting friendship with Omar's sister Amal; and the early 20th century story of Englishwoman Anna Winterbourne (Isabel's great-grandmother), her ex-patriate life in Egypt, and her marriage to Sharif al-Ghamrawi. Isabel inherits a trunk full of Anna's papers and possessions from her time in Egypt, and gives Amal the task of organizing, translating, and making sense of the story they tell. The dual structure and the theme of investigating an ancestor's mysterious past reminded me quite a bit of Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose. The Map of Love lives up to the comparison, too. It's a very engrossing book with great characterizations. It touches on the themes of how the past informs, influences, and sometimes even mirrors the present, and how distance, both psychological and physical, shapes human relationships. Plus, the portrayal of colonial Egypt, something I knew nothing about, was very interesting.
by Adhaf Soueif
This novel is really two stories in one: the modern-day story of Isabel Parkman, her romance with Egyptian conductor and activist Omar al-Ghamrawi, and her resulting friendship with Omar's sister Amal; and the early 20th century story of Englishwoman Anna Winterbourne (Isabel's great-grandmother), her ex-patriate life in Egypt, and her marriage to Sharif al-Ghamrawi. Isabel inherits a trunk full of Anna's papers and possessions from her time in Egypt, and gives Amal the task of organizing, translating, and making sense of the story they tell. The dual structure and the theme of investigating an ancestor's mysterious past reminded me quite a bit of Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose. The Map of Love lives up to the comparison, too. It's a very engrossing book with great characterizations. It touches on the themes of how the past informs, influences, and sometimes even mirrors the present, and how distance, both psychological and physical, shapes human relationships. Plus, the portrayal of colonial Egypt, something I knew nothing about, was very interesting.
