In one memorable scene, they ride the Arabians through Nugb Hawa, a spectacular pass between 1,500-foot-tall granite cliffs. Out there in the vast desert, Anna and Sharif fall in love.

And below, all was blackness, except for the flickering glow cast by the dying fire. Far, far away, was a sky of black velvet with stars so plentifully strewn across it that, if more had come, they would have been hard put to find an empty space. It is a vastness which I have never before experienced - the land, the sea and the sky, all stretching unbroken and united. 'I am in the desert of Sinai,' Anna writes one night in her tent. They set out on a 14-day trek, five men and Anna on camels, leading two more camels bearing provisions and two Arabian horses, one chestnut, one white. The home in which Anna finds herself sequestered belongs to Sharif, who agrees to accompany her into the desert to ensure her safety. Before leaving the city, however, she is kidnapped by two young radicals in retaliation for the arrest of one of their compatriots. Anna, who feels the heart of Egypt has eluded her as she has lived among British expatriates in Cairo, decides to cross the Sinai desert to visit the ancient monastery of St. One early chapter is particularly haunting. Described by one critic as a 'massive family saga' told from various points of view, The Map of Love takes some patience at the beginning but is well worth the effort. Soueif enlists different typefaces to differentiate between Amal's words (narrator and granddaughter of Layla), Anna's journal entries and accounts by Layla. Sharif and his sister Layla are the forebears of Amal and Isabel, the contemporary women in the novel. Like Soueif herself, this novel has a foot in both worlds. Soueif lived in Egypt from 1958 to 1973 but returned to England to pursue her doctorate in linguistics. It is the third novel by Ahdaf Soueif, Egyptian-born but brought to England in 1954 at age 4 by her mother, who was studying for her Ph.D at London University. Set in Egypt and New York alternately in the early 1900s and late 1990s, The Map of Love is a love story entwined with the troubled politics of Egypt and the Middle East that continue to this day. But they fell in love, married and had a daughter, living happily together until Sharif's death 10 years later. He was 45 and had never been married she was 29 and recently widowed. Sharif spoke little English, Anna knew no Egyptian they communicated in French.

It's a story told through Anna's journals, which her heirs, Amal and Isabel, discover in an old trunk. So begins the love story of Sharif Pasha al-Baroudi and Lady Anna Winterbourne in the earliest years of the 20th century.

The map of love by ahdaf soueif