Joukhadar Zeyn - The Thirty Names Of Night A Novel - Paperback

Binding: Paperback
Description: Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction Winner of the AL a Stonewall Book Award Barbara Gittings Literature Award Named Best Book of the Year by Bustle Named Most Anticipated Book of the Year by The Millions Electric Literature and Huff Post From the award - winning author of The Map of Salt and Stars a new novel about three generations of Syrian Americans haunted by a mysterious species of bird and the truths they carry close to their hearts a vivid exploration of loss art queer and trans communities and the persistence of history. Often tender always engrossing The Thirty Names of Night is a feat (R. O. Kwon author of The Incendiaries). Five years after a suspicious fire killed his ornithologist mother a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. As his grandmother's sole caretaker he spends his days cooped up in their apartment avoiding his neighborhood masjid his estranged sister and even his best friend (who also happens to be his longtime crush). The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once - thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria but he's been struggling ever since his mother's ghost began visiting him each evening. One night he enters the abandoned community house and finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z who dedicated her career to painting birds. She mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years before but her journal contains proof that both his mother and Laila Z encountered the same rare bird before their deaths. In fact Laila Z's past is intimately tied to his mother's in ways he never could have expected. Even more surprising Laila Z's story reveals the histories of queer and transgender people within his own community that he never knew. Realizing that he isn t and has never been alone he has the courage to claim a new name: Nadir an Arabic name meaning rare. As unprecedented numbers of birds are mysteriously drawn to the New York City skies Nadir enlists the help of his family and friends to unravel what happened to Laila Z and the rare bird his mother died trying to save. Following his mother's ghost he uncovers the silences kept in the name of survival by his own community his own family and within himself and discovers the family that was there all along. Featuring Zeyn Joukhadar's signature folkloric lyrical and emotionally intense. gorgeous and alive (Kirkus Reviews starred review) storytelling The Thirty Names of Night is a stunning vivid visceral and urgent (Booklist starred review) exploration of loss memory migration and identity.
Title: The Thirty Names Of Night A Novel
Author(s): Joukhadar Zeyn
Publisher: Washington Square Press
Barcode: 9781982121525
Pages: 320 Pages
Language: English
Publication Date: 7/13/2021
Category: Modern & Contemporary Fiction