The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi

Elif Shafak

Mar 2010 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Laural Merlington

About this audiobook

In this follow-up to her acclaimed 2007 novel The Bastard of Istanbul, Turkish author Elif Shafak unfolds two tantalizing parallel narratives-one contemporary and the other set in the thirteenth century, when Rumi encountered his spiritual mentor, the whirling dervish known as Shams of Tabriz-that together incarnate the poet's timeless message of love. Ella Rubenstein is forty years old and unhappily married when she takes a job as a reader for a literary agent. Her first assignment is to read and report on Sweet Blasphemy, a novel written by a man named Aziz Zahara. Ella is mesmerized by his tale of Shams' search for Rumi and the dervish's role in transforming the successful but unhappy cleric into a committed mystic, passionate poet, and advocate of love. She is also taken with Shams's lessons, or rules, which offer insight into an ancient philosophy based on the unity of all people and religions, and the presence of love in each and every one of us. As she reads on, she realizes that Rumi's story mirrors her own and that Zahara-like Shams-has come to set her free.

Ratings and reviews

I love this book. I have listened many times and each time enjoy it even more than the last time. Very well written. This book is a life changing book for me.

Amazing, inspiring and enlightening book...

This book is life changing ♥️

About the author

Elif Shafak, an award-winning, bestselling novelist and the most widely read female writer in Turkey, is the author of The Gaze and The Saint of Incipient Insanities.

Laural Merlington has recorded well over one hundred audiobooks and has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards, including one for Never Say Die by Susan Jacoby.