The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif (Bloomsbury, £6.99 in UK)

The 1999 Booker Prize folk declared this novel to be the best "read" on the shortlist. The august judges didn't go so far as to say this is one of the books to bring to the beach this summer, but it is. The Map of Love is primarily set in Egypt, with asides to New York and the home counties of England. It shuttles between the turn of the nineteenth century and the turn of the twentieth, and makes the point that although time passes, the matters which engage both generations are essentially the same - politics, national independence, personal independence and, of course, love. Recently widowed, Englishwoman Anna Winterbourne goes to Cairo in 1900, and falls in love with Sharif Basha al-Baroudi, an Egyptian whose raison d'etre is to help procure the independence of his country. The Map of Love is their story, and it is also the story of how their descendants come in contact with each other in 1998 - brother and sister Omar and Amal, and their distant relative Isabel, who falls in love with Omar. The map of love is the trunk which Isabel is given by Omar in New York, containing the journals, letters, and mementoes which belonged to Anna, and which she opens with Amal in Cairo. It is also the map of the geographical, political, and romantic boundaries of old and modern Egypt. Soueif melds her story of history, love and contrasting cultures with beguiling skill, creating an atmosphere that lingers like the scent of orange blossom that infuses the most important passages of the novel.