The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar 3.75/5 Awards: Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Historical Fiction and for Debut Author (2018) Version française: La carte du souvenir et de l’espoir Synopsis It is the summer of 2011, and Nour has just lost her father to cancer. Her mother, a cartographer, decides to move Nour and her sisters from New York City back to Syria to be closer to their family. But the country Nour's mother once knew is changing, and it isn't long before protests and shelling threaten their quiet Homs neighbourhood. More than eight hundred years earlier, Rawiya, sixteen and a widow’s daughter, knows she must do something to help her impoverished mother. Disguising herself as a boy named Rami, she becomes an apprentice to al-Idrisi, who has been commissioned by King Roger II of Sicily to create a map of the world. My thoughts The Map of Salt and Stars is ambitious. Joukhadar’s book weaves together the 21st century and 12th century Middle East, two drastically different environments united mostly by geography, but divided by systems of thought, technology and mores. However, some facts remain unchanged: warfare, loss, friendship and, most importantly, migration. Jouhkhadar’s great victory was her subtle commentary on immigration across the Middle East. Despite migrants facing challenges, most of which have only rebranded themselves through the eras, migration is a tradition as early as the dawn of time. Warfare might have replaced a giant, human-hunting magical bird, but the process of people being displaced by war or by a quest for knowledge is a fundamental part of Mediterranean life since Antiquity. Even if the book still lacked a ‘wow’ factor and a distinctively original approach, TMSS remains a relative success for a debut novel. TMSS is at the cross-section between YA and adult. It has a child-like view of the world, but it does not shy away from the harsh realities of war and displacement, especially in Nour's narrative. While the book can be overly hopeful at times, especially during Rawiya’s sections which read very much like a YA/middle-grade novel, Joukhadar’s honesty pulls us back into a more mature universe where death and pain are not forgotten.
This imbalance in the tone and plot devices between Rawiya and Nour’s stories puzzles me. On one hand, they feel a lot like two separate novels, yet, as I mentioned, the juxtaposition allows for compelling parallels between the 12thcentury and today. Rawiya’s story also always foreshadows what will happen to Nour, taking away some of the suspense, but creating a deeper synergy between the two girls. Even if they feel like two different books, but they also could not exist without the other. I am still unsure how I feel about it (which is not the best thing when you are trying to review a book). I imagine that for people who enjoy both YA and adult literature, it would be the best of both worlds. The setting is another strength of the book. Joukhadar does not include many details that would not make sense nor that did not really happen. Instead, she works around the setting to put our characters in. al-Idrisi was indeed a real cartographer who did work for the King of Sicily, the Fatimid and Almohad were also real warring factions in this era. While I could not find evidence of some of the battles our characters take part in, they are still well within the realm of possibility. This might not matter to some readers, but I always enjoy a book even more when the author takes care to recreate a plausible historical setting. The cherry on the cake was Joukhadar’s inclusion of tales from A Thousand and One Nights, which also date from around that era. I do not know much about these stories beyond what Western media has taught me, but the author’s note was enlightening. It was fascinating to learn about other classic tales and characters, such as the Roc. I also appreciated that the main protagonists and most of the secondary characters were women. While they are not revolutionary characters, they do carry a sense of strength that makes them relatable. Since Nour idolizes Rawiya, they are inevitably quite similar in their broad characteristics. However, the differences in tone and setting make no confusion possible between both. Another differentiating factor is that Nour has synaesthesia, a condition that allows sounds or words to be associated with colours (for example, for Nour, when she hears alarm signals, flashes of red appear in her vision). While this added a layer of originality to Nour, it got repetitive. Every time she faces a potential danger, she sees red, when she is on a ship, she sees blue. The colour associations, while probably accurate to someone with synesthesia, were not inventive either. The side characters are all underdeveloped and have one or two determining characteristics. Personally, it did not bother me too much as the story is focused almost entirely on the Nour/Rawiya dichotomy. Overall, The Map of Salt and Stars was a pleasant debut novel from Joukhadar. The setting and the structure of the story were interesting and well-done. However, there is room for improvements in terms of characters and writing. The book remains an agreeable, quick and easy read. Anyone into Middle Eastern culture or just looking to get out of a reading slump will enjoy it. If you liked The Map of Salt and Stars, you will love… A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck The Winternight series by Katherine Arden
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