Zeyn Joukhadar

“This imaginative but very real look into war-torn Syria is a must.” –Booklist (starred review) This rich, moving, and lyrical debut novel is to Syria what The Kite Runner was to Afghanistan; the story of two girls living eight hundred years apart—a modern-day Syrian refugee seeking safety and a medieval adventurer apprenticed to a legendary mapmaker—places today’s headlines in the sweep of history, where the pain of exile and the triumph of courage echo again and again. In the summer of 2011, just after Nour loses her father to cancer, her mother moves Nour and her sisters from New York City back to Syria to be closer to their family. In order to keep her father’s spirit as she adjusts to her new home, Nour tells herself their favorite story—the tale of Rawiya, a twelfth-century girl who disguised herself as a boy in order to apprentice herself to a famous mapmaker. But the Syria Nour’s parents knew is changing, and it isn’t long before the war reaches their quiet Homs neighborhood. When a stray shell destroys Nour’s house and almost takes her life, she and her family are forced to choose: stay and risk more violence or flee across seven countries of the Middle East and North Africa in search of safety—along the very route Rawiya and her mapmaker took eight hundred years before in their quest to chart the world. As Nour’s family decides to take the risk, their journey becomes more and more dangerous, until they face a choice that could mean the family will be separated forever. Following alternating timelines and a pair of unforgettable heroines coming of age in perilous times, The Map of Salt and Stars is the epic story of one girl telling herself the legend of another and learning that, if you listen to your own voice, some things can never be lost.

A Novel

The Map of Salt and Stars

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2020 by The Millions, Electric Literature, Bustle, and HuffPost Named a Best Book of Fall by USA TODAY, PopSugar, Alma, and Goodreads The author of the “vivid and urgent…important and timely” (The New York Times Book Review) debut The Map of Salt and Stars returns with this remarkably moving and lyrical novel following three generations of Syrian Americans who are linked by a mysterious species of bird and the truths they carry close to their hearts. Five years after a suspicious fire killed his ornithologist mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. He has been unable to paint since his mother’s ghost has begun to visit him each evening. As his grandmother’s sole caretaker, he spends his days cooped up in their apartment, avoiding his neighborhood masjid, his estranged sister, and even his best friend (who also happens to be his longtime crush). The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria. One night, he enters the abandoned community house and finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z, who dedicated her career to painting the birds of North America. She famously and mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years before, but her journal contains proof that both his mother and Laila Z encountered the same rare bird before their deaths. In fact, Laila Z’s past is intimately tied to his mother’s—and his grandmother’s—in ways he never could have expected. Even more surprising, Laila Z’s story reveals the histories of queer and transgender people within his own community that he never knew. Realizing that he isn’t and has never been alone, he has the courage to officially claim a new name: Nadir, an Arabic name meaning rare. As unprecedented numbers of birds are mysteriously drawn to the New York City skies, Nadir enlists the help of his family and friends to unravel what happened to Laila Z and the rare bird his mother died trying to save. Following his mother’s ghost, he uncovers the silences kept in the name of survival by his own community, his own family, and within himself, and discovers the family that was there all along. Featuring Zeyn Joukhadar’s signature “magical and heart-wrenching” (The Christian Science Monitor) storytelling, The Thirty Names of Night is a timely exploration of how we all search for and ultimately embrace who we are.

The Thirty Names of Night

"Mama uma vez disse que a cidade era um mapa de todas as pessoas que viveram e morreram nela, e Baba disse que todo mapa era, na verdade, uma história." Em meio a protestos, conflitos e bombardeios durante a guerra civil de 2011 na Síria, a jovem Nur é forçada a deixar o país em busca de segurança. Quase mil anos antes, Rawiya, aprendiz de cartografia, traça exatamente a mesma rota, numa saga épica por terras desconhecidas. As duas jornadas de amadurecimento se intercalam, enquanto que as protagonistas, embora separadas por séculos de história, espelham as diferentes faces de milhões de refugiados do Oriente Médio e norte da África.

O mapa de sal e estrelas

Карта от звезди и сол

The summer 2020 issue of Mizna is guest edited by Zeyn Joukhadar and speaks to bodily autonomy, embodiment, and self-determination within a queer, transgender, SWANA, and Muslim lens. Mizna: Queer + Trans Voices bears witness to our rich history, and imagines futures for ourselves. Within these pages, we not only exist, and are loved, and are beautiful; we create magic. We turn our eyes toward worlds of our own making. Contributions from Dina Abdulhadi, Rasha Abdulhadi, Kamee Abrahamian, Danielle Badra, Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán, Michael Chang, Tarik Dobbs, Hazem Fahmy, Carissa Halston, Ghinwa Jawhari, Marlin M. Jenkins, Joe Kadi, Mena Kamel, Nour Kamel, Nihal Mubarak, Aiya Sakr, Omar Sakr, Trish Salah, Mejdulene B. Shomali, Fargo Tbakhi. Visual art by Cumaea Halim.

Mizna: Queer + Trans Voices

Ein Roman, der in der Hoffnungslosigkeit von Krieg und Flucht das Leben feiert Sommer 2011. Nour ist als Kind syrischer Einwanderer in New York geboren. Als ihr Vater stirbt, beschließt Nours Mutter, in ihre Heimat Syrien zurückzugehen. Doch das Syrien, das Nours Eltern noch kannten, gibt es nicht mehr. Schon bald erreicht der Krieg auch das ruhige Stadtviertel von Homs, in dem die Familie lebt. Als ihr Haus von einer Granate zerstört wird, fällt die Entscheidung, das Land zu verlassen. Ziel ist Spanien, und der Weg wird die Familie durch Jordanien, Ägypten, Libyen, Algerien und Marokko führen. Auf der Suche nach Trost und Ablenkung erzählt sich Nour während der Flucht die Fabel von Rawiya, einer jungen Abenteurerin, die sich im 12. Jahrhundert dem berühmten Kartografen al-Idrisi anschließt, um die Kunst des Kartenzeichnens zu erlernen. Viele Orte, die Rawiya durchreist, liegen auf der Route von Nour und ihrer Familie. Damals wie heute lauert Gefahr. Bis Nours Mutter vor einer Entscheidung steht, die die Familie für immer auseinanderreißen könnte.

Zeyn Joukhadar

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