The Map of Salt and Stars

"The Map of Salt and Stars is the sweeping, thrillingly ambitious tale of Nour, Rawiya, and their parallel searches for home. In twin narratives that unfold eight hundred years apart, Joukhadar captures the unrelenting courage of those who persist amid the trials of exile. A truly remarkable debut."--Kirstin Chen, author of Bury What We Cannot Take and Soy Sauce for Beginners
"E. M. Forster taught us that 'fiction is truer than history because it goes beyond the evidence.' Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar's magic first novel is a testimony to that maxim. We've all been aware of the plight of Syrian refugees, but in this richly imaginative story we see one small family - both haunted by history and saved by myth - work their way west. It's beautiful and lovely and eye-opening."

--Chris Bohjalian, bestselling author of The Flight Attendant and The Guest Room

"In her debut novel, Joukhadar's jeweled prose sparkles with fanciful images...The Map of Salt and Stars is, in sum, a hero's odyssey, a spellbinding geography of family and hope."-- "Shelf Awareness"
"In many ways, The Map of Salt and Stars is at once a testament to the brutality of the current Syrian conflict and a reverent ode to ancient Arabian history. Syrian-American writer Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar has crafted an audacious debut, ambitious and sprawling in both time and space. . . The Map of Salt and Stars presents an Arab world in full possession of its immense historical and cultural biography, marred by its modern tragedies but not exclusively defined by them."-- "BookPage"
"The ancient, sometimes mystical connection between maps, people, and knowledge is central to Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar's The Map of Salt and Stars, a double tale of voyage and exile that moves between contemporary war-torn Syria and the caravansaries and khans of its lost past....What Joukhadar does beautifully is to connect, in a vivid and urgent way, Syria and the United States....The Map of Salt and Stars is important and timely becasue it shows how interconnected two supposedly opposing worlds can be. Our many stories are part of the same larger tale, part of the same larger map."-- "The New York Times Book Review"