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A review by li3an1na4
The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar
4.0
I received this book in exchange for an honest review.
A dual narrative story. One is something you'd hear a storyteller spin, and the other is something that could (and is) happening now.
The first story takes place in 2011. Nour and her family have moved back to Syria after the death of her father because her mother thought it'd be easier to be closer to family. Reading this book in 2018 it's very easy to scream "WHY?!?!", but for them at the time, it seemed to be a wise decision. Nour's story tackles the shellings that happen in Syria in 2011, the Arab Spring in general, and the refugee crisis that it causes. It's heartbreaking and raw, from the eyes of a child slowly losing her innocence.
The second story is a work of historical fiction taking place in the 1100's. It is about Rawiya, a young girl who pretends to be a boy so she can join the great (real) cartographer Muhammad al-Idrisi as an apprentice. They're on a mission from King Roger (also real) to map parts of the Middle East. This story seems to be a tale that Nour's family told her and there are parallels as the stories go.
Each chapter starts with Rawiya's story and ends with Nour's. While both stories are interesting enough at the start, Nour's story became the story I wanted more of. I have to confess that I started skimming Rawiya and what her crew was going through just to get to Nour and her family faster. I'm obviously speaking for myself when I say that I don't think both stories should have had equal weight. Rawiya's short have been firmly relegated to more of a story within a story. And I think ultimately, the distraction of switching between two stories brought the rating of the book down for me.
The Syrian Civil War is still happening. People are still dying. As of November 2018:
~13.1 million people in the country need humanitarian assistance.
~5.6 million Syrians have fled the country as refugees
~6.2 million people are displaced within Syria
~ 20,819 children killed
there's no consensus on death toll numbers but "The last comprehensive number widely accepted internationally — 470,000 dead" was from 2016.
This story is heart breaking and hard, but it can't compare to what's actually happening. This book gives a story to all the numbers I spouted above.
A dual narrative story. One is something you'd hear a storyteller spin, and the other is something that could (and is) happening now.
The first story takes place in 2011. Nour and her family have moved back to Syria after the death of her father because her mother thought it'd be easier to be closer to family. Reading this book in 2018 it's very easy to scream "WHY?!?!", but for them at the time, it seemed to be a wise decision. Nour's story tackles the shellings that happen in Syria in 2011, the Arab Spring in general, and the refugee crisis that it causes. It's heartbreaking and raw, from the eyes of a child slowly losing her innocence.
The second story is a work of historical fiction taking place in the 1100's. It is about Rawiya, a young girl who pretends to be a boy so she can join the great (real) cartographer Muhammad al-Idrisi as an apprentice. They're on a mission from King Roger (also real) to map parts of the Middle East. This story seems to be a tale that Nour's family told her and there are parallels as the stories go.
Each chapter starts with Rawiya's story and ends with Nour's. While both stories are interesting enough at the start, Nour's story became the story I wanted more of. I have to confess that I started skimming Rawiya and what her crew was going through just to get to Nour and her family faster. I'm obviously speaking for myself when I say that I don't think both stories should have had equal weight. Rawiya's short have been firmly relegated to more of a story within a story. And I think ultimately, the distraction of switching between two stories brought the rating of the book down for me.
The Syrian Civil War is still happening. People are still dying. As of November 2018:
~13.1 million people in the country need humanitarian assistance.
~5.6 million Syrians have fled the country as refugees
~6.2 million people are displaced within Syria
~ 20,819 children killed
there's no consensus on death toll numbers but "The last comprehensive number widely accepted internationally — 470,000 dead" was from 2016.
This story is heart breaking and hard, but it can't compare to what's actually happening. This book gives a story to all the numbers I spouted above.