This powerful 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 an adventurous mapmaker’s apprentice–“perfectly aligns with the cultural moment” (The Providence Journal) and ”shows how interconnected two supposedly opposing worlds can be” (The New York Times Book … (The New York Times Book Review).
This “beguiling” (Seattle Times) and stunning novel begins in the summer of 2011. Nour has just lost her father to cancer, and 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 alive 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 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 “magical and heart-wrenching” (Christian Science Monitor) 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.
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This was a gorgeous book. I absolutely loved the intertwining of the present-day nightmare of fleeing the conflict in Syria with a legend from the past. I was truly transported, and anyone who has any doubt about how difficult and horrible the war in Syria was should read this book and gain a greater understanding. Fabulous. Highly recommended.
I love this novel.
Blending history, legend, and the story of a girl coming of age during the Syrian civil war, this book is masterfully crafted both in structure and language. The parallel stories of Nour, surviving as refugee, and Rawiya, a young woman who becomes a scholar and warrior centuries earlier, interweave with mystical beauty by the end. Despite the suffering in the 21st century parts of the book, hope, family, friendship, and extraordinary depths of love make the journey meaningful. In the historical segments, there’s adventure and a touch of magic, an escape into the stories Nour’s father used to tell her. The author develops Nour’s synesthesia as part of the poetry of her imagery. Somehow, I knew exactly what it meant that Yusuf’s voice was teal, or that her Baba’s voice had been oak. The characters inspire compassion and admiration. All in all, one of the best books I’ve ever read.
A rare and true treasure. The author has woven a tapestry from two strands of story. The narration is flawless. I highly recommend this book, but not for casual listening. Be involved.
Zeyn Joukhadar’s The Map of Salt and Stars sucked me in with a fascinating structure: parallel stories, both anchored in Syria, one set in modern times and the other in medieval. Unfortunately, this dynamic never quite lived up to its potential.
The present-day portion is narrated by Nour, the youngest daughter of a family who moves back to Syria as civil war is breaking out in 2011. The conflict quickly renders them homeless and forces them to shift from country to country in search of sanctuary. It’s a heartbreaking tale focused not on politics—Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s brutal would-be dictator, is never mentioned—but on the dangers and tragedies that beset refugees, particularly women, when strife sunders a nation.
It’s not all dark: Nour and her family are resilient and likable, and they exercise the small agencies circumstances allow. Yet the real counterweight is the interwoven story of Rawiya, a twelfth-century girl who leaves her mother’s home to seek out Abu Abd Allah Muhammad al-Idrisi, the mapmaker commissioned by the Norman King Roger to chart the world. Rawiya pretends to be a young man so she can serve as al-Idrisi’s apprentice. Together they visit exotic lands, escape hostile armies, and battle mythical beasts such as the legendary roc.
This tale is also told by Nour, a saga she learned from her father. Rawiya’s exploits give Nour courage as she travels the same region. But the contrast is stark: Rawiya chose to embark on a grand journey; Nour and her family were forced to flee their home. She recognizes the difference. “I’m not Rawiya,” she admits at one point. “This isn’t an adventure.”
Yet aside from making Nour’s nightmare bearable, Rawiya’s story has no real bearing on her counterpart, and vice versa. There are shared themes—strong female protagonists, the importance of family, the wonder of maps—and a few moments when Nour believes she’s found physical artifacts of Rawiya’s experiences, but nothing truly substantive. It’s a necessary disconnect; the girls are separated by time and fact. To establish real interplay, Joukhadar would have had to inject as much fantasy into Nour’s passages as she did Rawiya’s, and that might have undermined the novel’s message. Still, I think it’s the way these characters operate largely independent of each other that made The Map of Salt and Stars a slow read for me.
I enjoyed Joukhadar’s prose, though. Nour has synesthesia, and her version of the condition associates shapes and colors with smells, sounds, and letters. This makes for some beautiful descriptions as she maps her world: “Inside,” Nour says of the family’s house in Syria, “the walls breathe sumac and sigh out the tang of olives. Oil and fat sizzle in a pan, popping up in yellow and black bursts in my ears. The colors of voices and smells tangle in front of me like they’re projected on a screen: the peaks and curves of Huda’s pink-and-purple laugh, the brick-red ping of a kitchen timer, the green bite of baking yeast.”
Language like that kept me going even when the pace lagged. I’m glad I made it through. The Map of Salt and Stars is worth finishing.
(For more reviews like this one, see http://www.nickwisseman.com)
A little slow but a great summer read! The author does such an amazing job of detailing the surroundings and events that you can picture yourself right along the side of all of the characters in this book!
This book uses a fable about a young woman as parallel story to modern Syrian refugees seeking asylum. The fable follows the same route the main modern day characters take to find safety from the horror of the Syrian civil war. Although I was initially put off by the fable (at first I kept checking to make sure this was not a YA book), I could not escape the less fanciful story about modern refugees and the dangers they face seeking to just stay alive.