Elif Shafak’s compelling novel, The Forty Rules of Love, follows Ella Rubinstein on a journey of self-discovery as she examines her life and the concept of love through Sufi mysticism.

Discover the forty rules of love. . .

Ella Rubinstein has a husband, three teenage children, and a pleasant home. Everything that should make her confident and fulfilled. Yet there is an emptiness at the heart of Ella’s life – an emptiness once filled by love.

So when Ella reads a manuscript about the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi and Shams of Tabriz, and his forty rules of life and love, her world is turned upside down. She embarks on a journey to meet the mysterious author of this work.

It is a quest infused with Sufi mysticism and verse, taking Ella and us into an exotic world where faith and love are heartbreakingly explored. . .

‘Enlightening, enthralling. An affecting paean to faith and love’ Metro

‘Colourfully woven and beguilingly intelligent’ Daily Telegraph

‘The past and present fit together beautifully in a passionate defence of passion itself’ The Times

Elif Shafak has emerged as one of the most distinctive voices in both English and Turkish contemporary literature; her novels, The Bastard of Istanbul, The Flea Palace, The Gaze and Honour, are consistently at the top of bestseller lists across the globe. Elif Shafak’s examination of national identity, The Happiness of Blond People is available as part of the Penguin Specials series – a digital only series of shorts designed with commuters in mind.

» Read the first pages of The Forty Rules of Love by downloading the Penguin Taster here

» Visit Penguin Tasters

Between your fingers you hold a stone and throw it into flowing
water. The effect might not be easy to see. There will be
a small ripple where the stone breaks the surface and then a
splash, muffl ed by the rush of the surrounding river. That’s all.
Throw a stone into a lake. The eff ect will be not only visible but
also far more lasting. The stone will disrupt the still waters. A circle will
form where the stone hit the water, and in a fl ash that circle will multiply
into another, then another. Before long the ripples caused by one plop
will expand until they can be felt everywhere along the mirrored surface
of the water. Only when the circles reach the shore will they stop and
die out.
If a stone hits a river, the river will treat it as yet another commotion
in its already tumultuous course. Nothing unusual. Nothing
unmanageable.
If a stone hits a lake, however, the lake will never be the same
again.
For forty years Ella Rubinstein’s life had consisted of still waters— a
predictable sequence of habits, needs, and preferences. Though it was
monotonous and ordinary in many ways, she had not found it tiresome.
During the last twenty years, every wish she had, every person she
befriended, and every decision she made was fi ltered through her marriage.
Her husband, David, was a successful dentist who worked hard and
made a lot of money. She had always known that they did not connect on
any deep level, but connecting emotionally need not be a priority on a
married couple’s list, she thought, especially for a man and a woman who
had been married for so long. There were more important things than
passion and love in a marriage, such as understanding, affection, compassion,
and that most godlike act a person could perform, forgiveness.
Love was secondary to any of these. Unless, that is, one lived in novels
or romantic movies, where the protagonists were always larger than life
and their love nothing short of legend.
Ella’s children topped her list of priorities. They had a beautiful
daughter in college, Jeannette, and teenage twins, Orly and Avi. Also,
they had a twelve- year- old golden retriever, Spirit, who had been Ella’s
walking buddy in the mornings and her cheeriest companion ever since
he’d been a puppy. Now he was old, overweight, completely deaf, and
almost blind; Spirit’s time was coming, but Ella preferred to think he
would go on forever. Then again, that was how she was. She never confronted
the death of anything, be it a habit, a phase, or a marriage, even
when the end stood right in front of her, plain and inevitable.
The Rubinsteins lived in Northampton, Massachusetts, in a large
Victorian house that needed some renovation but still was splendid, with
five bedrooms, three baths, shiny hardwood floors, a three-car garage,
French doors, and, best of all, an outdoor Jacuzzi. They had life insurance,
car insurance, retirement plans, college savings plans, joint bank
accounts, and, in addition to the house they lived in, two prestigious
apartments: one in Boston, the other in Rhode Island. She and David
had worked hard for all this. A big, busy house with children, elegant
furniture, and the wafting scent of homemade pies might seem a cliché
to some people, but to them it was the picture of an ideal life. They had
built their marriage around this shared vision and had attained most, if
not all, of their dreams.