The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar

However the unrest and violence in Syria soon has them fleeing to try and make their way back to safety. The intention is that her mother can earn enough as a map maker to support the family. This book has a different take on things when young Nour, after the death of her father, leaves the US with her family to migrate to Syria.

Recently, our view the refugee experience has been the trip trying to enter the US or the initial immersion into a culture that is vastly different. 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.įollowing 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. 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. 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.īut the Syria Nour’s parents knew is changing, and it isn’t long before the war reaches their quiet Homs neighborhood. 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. This “beguiling” ( Seattle Times) and stunning novel begins in the summer of 2011. 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 Review).

The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar