I put off starting this book for too long because I knew that once I started it I wouldn’t be able to stop, and I knew that all too soon it would be over, and I would be left craving more. I absolutely loved Zeyn Joukhadar’s first novel The Map of Salt and Stars, it still haunts me today, the parallel storylines, the epic descriptions, the words that made my heart hurt, and fly at the same time. So obviously I was overjoyed when I saw that his second novel would be released this year. And it is just as beautiful, just as heartbreaking, and just as epic as his first, all the while completely different. The Thirty Names of Night is going to be my number one favorite read this year, just like The Map of Salt and Stars was my favorite of 2018 (and 2019 because I read it again last year). 

The Thirty Names of Night is ultimately a story of discovery and self-acceptance. I don’t want to give it all away in my review, but it’s hard to describe the overall storyline without telling part of the plot. It is the story of Nadir, a young person of Syrian descent, whose mother’s death in a fire five years before still haunts him (so much that he constantly sees her ghost in his daily life). Nadir’s mother was an ornithologist who documented rare Northern American birds, and who had been trying to convince others of her sighting of a bird so rare that barely anyone believed it existed. Woven into Nadir’s story is also the story of Laila Z, brilliant artist of birds, Syrian immigrant to the US in the early 20th century, who disappeared 40 years earlier never to be seen again. Nadir makes it his mission to uncover the mystery of the bird, thereby keeping his mother’s spirit close, and in doing so discovers the secrets of Laila Z’s life and disappearance. But the overall arch to this story is Nadir’s transformation and self-acceptance, at first hiding the body that doesn’t represent what he feels inside, and then finally ready to accept who he really is.

There is so much depth in each story, and every detail matters, right down to the names of each character: how names carry importance, whether they are our personal choice or that of another. I love how the author describes the setting, each description reminds me of my own life in NYC, walking, smelling, hearing… Zeyn Joukhadar has this amazing ability to paint a moving picture with words, weaving past, present and different characters together, to create these beautifully deep and real stories that don’t leave you. Birds are such a huge, integral part of this book, and I love how they appear everywhere, porters of messages, of hope, of healing, of secrets. On a personal level birds amaze me, and I have spent a lot of time over the past 8 months observing them from my balcony, so their symbolism in the novel added yet another depth to it for me. Just absolutely beautiful.

I cannot recommend this story enough, it captured my heart.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review. And thank you so much to Zeyn Joukhadar for writing such epic, beautiful, timeless, and timely stories.