The Map of Love: A Novel
Ahdaf Soueif'sThe Map of Loveis a massive family saga,  a story that draws its readers into two moments in the complex,  troubled history of modern Egypt. The story begins in 1977 in New York.  There Isabel Parkman discovers an old trunk full of documents--some in  English, some in Arabic--in her dying mother's apartment. Incapable of  deciphering this stash by herself, she turns to Omar al-Ghamrawi, a man  with whom she is falling in love. And Omar directs her in turn to his  sister Amal in Cairo.Together the two women begin to uncover the stories embedded in the  journal of Lady Anna Winterbourne, who traveled to Egypt in 1900 and  fell in love with Sharif Pasha al-Barudi, an Egyptian nationalist. To  their surprise, they stumble across some unsuspected connections  between their own families. Less surprising, perhaps, is the  persistence of the very same issues that dogged their ancestors:  colonialism, Egyptian nationalism, and the clash of cultures throughout  the Middle East. The past, however, does offer some semblance of  omniscience:That is the beauty of the past; there it lies on the table: journals,  pictures, a candle-glass, a few books of history. You leave it and come  back to it and it waits for you--unchanged. You can turn back the  pages, look again at the beginning. You can leaf forward and know the  end. And you tell the story that they, the people who lived it, could  only tell in part.With its multiple narratives and ever-shifting perspectives,The Map  of Lovewould seem to cast some doubt on even the most confident  historian's version of events. Yet this subtle and reflective tale of  love does suggest that the relations between individuals can  (sometimes) make a difference. "I am in an English autumn in 1897,"  Amal confesses at one point, "and Anna's troubled heart lies open  before me." Here, perhaps, is a hint about how we should read Soueif's  staggering novel, using words as a means to travel through time, space,  and identity.--Vicky Lebeau