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A review by alisonjfields
The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
2.0
It's midnight at the Oasis. The air is dry and warm, scented of Jasmine and a beautiful, spunky blonde Englishwoman in drag bewitches the sensitive, progressive Egyptian man in the shadow of the great ruins in one of several highly cinematic encounters written several decades too late for Omar Sharif and Julie Christie to play the protagonists.
I didn't hate this book (though it takes several strange, unadvised turns--at least once into a bizarre and unresolved issue of incest), but the framework (family saga+sex+politics)is pretty trite. If Isabel Allende married a Muslim, moved to Cairo and tried mimic E.M. Forster, this is probably what you'd get.
There is always at least one gem in the Booker shortlists . . . this was not one of them.
I didn't hate this book (though it takes several strange, unadvised turns--at least once into a bizarre and unresolved issue of incest), but the framework (family saga+sex+politics)is pretty trite. If Isabel Allende married a Muslim, moved to Cairo and tried mimic E.M. Forster, this is probably what you'd get.
There is always at least one gem in the Booker shortlists . . . this was not one of them.