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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 author creates a world for his characters in which readers who are perhaps unfamiliar with the communities being represented can find their way around, but he does not feel compelled to translate and explain. And Joukhadar's prose style—folkloric, lyrical, and emotionally intense—creates its own atmosphere. Gorgeous and alive." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Joukhadar conveys the protagonist's gender confusion with such a sense of turmoil and angst that the reader can also become a bit confused, but overall this is a brilliant novel from the author of the celebrated The Map of Salt and Stars." - Library Journal (starred review)
"Quietly lyrical and richly imaginative, Joukhadar's tale shows how Laila and Nadir live and love and work past the shame in their lives through their art. This is a stirring portrait of an artist as a young man." - Publishers Weekly
"Zeyn Joukhadar's new book is a vivid exploration of loss, art, queer and trans communities, and the persistence of history. Often tender, always engrossing, The Thirty Names of Night is a feat." - R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries
"Evocative and beautifully written, reading this is like opening a treasure trove of memories and images that shimmer both with light and the darkness of our times. It addresses important issues of migration, belonging, sexuality and love." - Christy Lefteri, author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo
"Long after the story ended, I remain haunted by Zeyn Joukhadar's novel, The Thirty Names of Night: part ghost story, part history, part art, all magic. Using gorgeous prose, Joukhadar deftly takes the reader on a journey of migration and belonging, explores the price of silence and of secrets, and tells an exquisite tale of family and love." - Devi S. Laskar, author of The Atlas of Reds and Blues
This information about The Thirty Names of Night was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Neha Gautam
Zeyn Joukhadar is the author of The Map of Salt and Stars and The Thirty Names of Night. He is a member of the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI) and of American Mensa. Joukhadar's writing has appeared in Salon, the Paris Review, the Kenyon Review, and elsewhere and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net. The Map of Salt and Stars was a 2018 Middle East Book Award winner in Youth Literature and a 2018 Goodreads Choice Award Finalist in Historical Fiction and was shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. He has been an artist in residence at the Montalvo Arts Center, the Fes Medina Project, Beit al-Atlas, and the Arab American National Museum.
Author Interview
Link to Zeyn Joukhadar's Website
Name Pronunciation
Zeyn Joukhadar: ZAYN JHOOK-hadar
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