Elif Shafak: The Forty Rules of Love

Ella Rubenstein is forty years old and unhappily married when she takes a job as a reader for a literary agent - and suddenly her life is transformed. Her first assignment is to read a novel about the ancient Sufi mystic, Rumi, who was transformed by the whirling dervish into a passionate poet and advocate of love. Slowly she realizes that his thirteenth-century life is starting to mirror her own, and in doing so it opens up exciting opportunities for her to embrace the dervish's timeless message for herself.
This is a mesmerizing novel about finding love and inspiration in the most unlikely of places.