Ella Rubinstein, a dissatisfied Massachusetts housewife newly working as a reader for a literary agency, is assigned to review a manuscript called Sweet Blasphemy and begins an unexpected correspondence with its author. That manuscript retells the thirteenth-century story of the transformative spiritual bond between the poet Rumi and the wandering dervish Shams of Tabriz, whose forty rules of love reshape everyone around them. As the two narratives mirror each other, Ella's own life is drawn open by the same questions.
Books mentioned in The Forty Rules of Love (8)
Masnavi by Rumi: “The dot underneath the B embodies the entire universe.… The Mathnawi starts with B, Just like the Bismillah.”
The Poems of al-Mutanabbi by Al-Mutanabbi: “Shams picked a book from the pile—The Collected Poems of al-Mutanabbi—eyed it with a grim expression, and tossed it into the water.”
The Book of Secrets by Farid ud-Din Attar: “This time it was Attar's The Book of Secrets.”
Ma'arif (The Divine Sciences) by Baha al-Din Walad: “The next to be hurled into the water was The Divine Sciences by Rumi's father.”
Layla and Majnun by Nizami Ganjavi: “We have read Layla and Majnun, Farhad and Shirin, Yusuf and Zuleikha, The Rose and the Nightingale—stories of lovers who have loved each other against all odds.”
Yusuf and Zulaikha by Jami: “We have read Layla and Majnun, Farhad and Shirin, Yusuf and Zuleikha, The Rose and the Nightingale—stories of lovers who have loved each other against all odds.”
Farhad and Shirin: “We have read Layla and Majnun, Farhad and Shirin, Yusuf and Zuleikha, The Rose and the Nightingale—stories of lovers who have loved each other against all odds.”