In 2008, in Northampton, Massachusetts, Ella Rubenstein, forty-year-old wife of David, has returned to work after a long lay off raising her three children. It is a part-time job, a reader for a literary agency, and the novel she has been sent to review is titled Sweet Blasphemy, by A Z Zahara.
She begins to read. It is set in thirteenth century Asia Minor, and concerns a young dervish called Shams of Tabriz and his quest to find a soulmate with whom he can share his belief that love transcends all religion.
Love is currently a sore topic for Ella. Her husband, who she thinks she loves, is a serial philanderer; and her eldest, though still young, daughter is threatening to wed her new boyfriend on the scanty basis of being in love.
The book toggles between Ella’s twenty-first century self-questioning and Shams’ thirteenth century pilgrimage of hope. The latter gets more airtime and paints a vivid picture of the time, location, and lives led by a representative cast – warrior, zealot, drunk, student, beggar, harlot – that Shams encounters on his wanderings. When he meets Rumi, a respected poet and teacher, a connection is made and a fast friendship formed. This does not please some of Rumi’s family and followers. But Shams meets distrust, envy, enmity, and hatred with love. He has forty rules with which to disarm his persecutors, but will that be enough to save his skin?
Meanwhile, in 2008, Ella is entranced by the novel and is driven to contact the author. She is seduced by the concept of love trumps all and seeks a meeting with Zahara. How will that end?
The two parallel
tales, love echoing down the centuries, command attention to the end. For me the
forty rules intrude a little and were a bit preachy, but nevertheless this is
an interesting read, expanding my knowledge to include dervishes, Sufism, and
the real historical characters of Rumi and Shams of Tabriz.
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