The Map of Love Literary Elements

Historical fiction novel

The story includes two countries (Britain and Egypt) and two years (1896 – Anna’s life and 1997 – modern life).

First-person narration, the narrator as Anna.

The story may seem hardly understandable at the beginning, but the more you read the more details you reveal and it becomes difficult to stop. The tone is highly emotional and so far as there are many characters in the book these emotions are various, vivid, and sometimes very dissimilar. No doubt, that the story has romantic mood, because the main topic of the book is love.

Anna is the protagonist and her unfair destiny might be considered the antagonist.

A major conflict goes on in the soul of Anna. She couldn’t accept that her husband passed away and she needs to start a new life. Also there is a political conflict between two countries, which affects relationships of characters.

The moment when Anna was kidnapped in Egypt is the climax. Then, reader may suppose that everything is over, her trip and her adventure ended, but in that particular moment her future husband saves her and a new stage of her life opens.

All events in the story happen against the background of political misunderstanding and opposition between Egypt and Britain.

In the story, we can notice the understatement of death in general. It was assumed that British people can’t mourn and treat the loss of a close person like a usual thing of life.

Allusions to cultural peculiarities of Egyptian and British nations are mentioned in the novel.

Vivid images of characters’ appearances and of their feelings are provided in the novel.

One paradox is the fact that Anna marries Sharif, despite the fact that he was Egyptian and she could have problems because of this marriage.

The lives of Isabel and Anna are being told in parallel.

‘…keeping time with small splashes in the water’. Anna said it when she was taking a bath alone and her only friend were water drops.

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