Wednesday, May 21, 2025
1pm only
Join us to discuss the novel:
The Map of Salt and Stars (2018)
by Zeyn Joukhadar (zhouk'-guh-dar)
This rich, moving, and lyrical debut novel, the story of two girls living eight hundred years apart—a modern-day Syrian refugee seeking safety and a medieval adventurer apprenticed to a legendary mapmaker—places today’s headlines in the sweep of history, where the pain of exile and the triumph of courage echo again and again. (from the publisher)
It is the summer of 2011, and Nour has just lost her father to cancer. Her mother, a cartographer who creates unusual, hand-painted maps, 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 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 as refugees across seven countries of the Middle East and North Africa in search of safety. As their journey becomes more and more challenging, Nour’s idea of home becomes a dream she struggles to remember and a hope she cannot live without.
More than eight hundred years earlier, Rawiya, sixteen and a widow’s daughter, knows she must do something to help her impoverished mother. Restless and longing to see the world, she leaves home to seek her fortune. 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. In his employ, Rawiya embarks on an epic journey across the Middle East and the north of Africa where she encounters ferocious mythical beasts, epic battles, and real historical figures.
A deep immersion into the richly varied cultures of the Middle East and North Africa, The Map of Salt and Stars follows the journeys of Nour and Rawiya as they travel along identical paths across the region eight hundred years apart, braving the unknown beside their companions as they are pulled by the promise of reaching home at last.
Resources for the novel:
More information on the book: www.zeynjoukhadar.com
Interviews with the author: www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7wx2TkRm4w. There are more interviews, etc. on the author's website: www.zeynjoukhadar.com.
Learn more about the Syrian Refugee Crisis
Learn about synesthesia from one of my favorite neuroscientists on Youtube and about what it's like to experience it from another video. These two are TED talks by synesthetes who try to demonstrate a taste of what it's like for them: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvPd3wH21z8 and www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LUbxfnpez4
To learn more about the Tabula Rogeriana -- the book al Idrisi created for Roger from 1138-1154, I suggest starting with this YouTube video. The oldest known copy of the book is preserved at the National Library of France. A copy of the al Idrisi's map of the known world (as recreated by Konrad Miller in 1928 from al-Idrisi’s original work) is at the Library of Congress. From LOC: "Written in Arabic with north oriented towards the bottom, al-Idrisi drew his map in 70 separate sections with accompanying text. When laid out, the original sheets would have created a rectangular map 9 feet and 5 inches long!"
Learn more about al Idrisi and Roger II of Sicily, both real people
Fascinating (to me, at least) is also this account of Ptolemy's Geographica (mentioned on pages 39 and 304)
Read more:
Joukhadar's most recent novel: The Thirty Names of Night
"Great Reads Related to Syria" from A World Adventure by Book
Books by Arab American authors: lists from PopSugar, or the Seattle Public Library
Books by Trans authors
In the news right now:
On April 22, NPR's Morning Edition had a piece on The White Helmets, a Syrian relief organization. You can also learn more from the award winning 2017 documentary (on Netflix) The White Helmets.
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