Review: The Map of Salt and Stars

The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar*
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Map of Salt and Stars is one of those rare books that leaves me filled with emotion as I close it and grasping at words to describe its beauty and magic. It is, at its heart, a refugee story but it is told with elements of magical realism. We have two stories, one set in modern times and the other in the 1100's, interwoven in a fashion common in some Arabic styles of writing. The two protagonists, Nour, the Syrian-American youngest daughter of immigrants to the US, whose mother makes the seemingly ill-fated choice of returning to Homs, Syria after her husband's death, and Rawiya, a brave girl who disguises herself as a boy, Rami, to work with famous mapmaker al-Idrisi, one of the most famous cartographers and creator of the Tabula Rogeriana (in the 1100's) for King Roger II of Sicily.

Anyone who has watched a scrap of news in the last five years must know that the idea of going home to Homs in Syria would have turned into an ill-fated plan for Nour's mother, herself a mapmaker, to embark upon with her three daughters. The story of their harrowing flight from Syria to the safety of Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the north coast of Africa, takes them through Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, finally to Ceuta, the birthplace of Al-Idrisi. Interwoven in lyrical and fantastical fashion with the adventures of Rawiya, whose story is a sort of love letter to the memory of Nour's father, a storyteller himself, we have a journey that takes us to places of the heart. Having two child narrators has a profound impact on the perceptions and accessibility of the two narratives, particularly the refugee/diaspora component. While brave Rawiya has adventures, Nour herself has them, too. Although she struggles with her sense of identity (a Syrian who doesn't even speak Arabic when her family returns to Homs) with her "superpower" of synesthesia, Nour's flight to safety with her family is rendered powerful in the mind of the reader.

This is a beautiful and powerful book. The most important place on a map is the place you haven't been. You should travel to a place of Salt and Stars.


The amazing Tabula Rogeriana (upside down, since in this time Arabic maps were printed with South at the top)


*Please note this novel was originally published under the author's former name but subsequent releases can be found uner his name Zeyn.


I received a Digital Review Copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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