Lyrical tale of a search for identity and community amidst the continued grieving after the death of a beloved mother. All of this takes place within an immigrant community in Brooklyn, with flashes back and forth to life in Syria prior to arrival in New York. The protagonist is an artist, in transition, struggling to rekindle their passion for life and art while searching for the mysterious author of an old journal found in their late mother’s belongings. This is a memorable and beautiful book. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Beautifully written sophomore novel from Joukhadar about family, longing, grief, and divergent paths. The author uses alternating timeline/perspectives to weave together a lovely story.

Trying to summarize this novel would be futile because any attempt wouldn't capture the lyrical nature of Joukhadar's writing, or his seemingly effortless ability, as in his first novel, A Map of Salt and Stars to find connections or mirrors between past and present, but I'll give it a shot.

With The Thirty Names of Night Zeyn Joukhadar confirms his standing as a powerful Arab American writer. In a layered and luminous novel, Joukhadar gives voice to multiple generations living the Arab immigrant experience, to queer voices, and the power of names. Equal parts historical fiction, ghost story, and an account of the obsessive search for rare birds that only birders can fully appreciate, The Thirty Names of Night gives us a protagonist on the cusp of transformation. Five years after the untimely death of his ornithologist mother, a closeted transboy, an artist who is visited nightly by his mother's ghost, follows an owl and comes across the diary of Laila Z., a painter whose images of birds were his mother's favorite. The treasured diary sends him on a journey that ultimately helps him express his authentic self, and pursue the mystery of Laila Z., a woman who lived a secret life as well.

This is a rich and multi-faceted story woven with a thread of folklore. The rare bird that is central to this story is linked by its name Geronticus simurghus to the Simurgh, a mythical bird mentioned in Sufi poetry. The Simurgh is used as a metaphor for God in Sufi writings and is also akin to a phoenix in Iranian folklore. Here signified by an ibis-like bird, both the protagonist's mother and Laila Z. saw the same rare creatures. As a metaphor for seeing God, seeing the truth, this is a beautiful way of bringing about one's own truth, of Nadir's choosing his name.

This novel is just filled with lyricism, life, and the undying nature of love.

A beautiful, heartbreaking own voices story about Syrian culture and history and the process and feeling of being transgender. The Thirty Names of Night is a multi-generational mystery told from 2 points of view: a 20-something Syrian American in current day New York struggling with gender and haunted by his mother's death, and through the journals of Laila, a painter and Syrian immigrant who disappeared from Little Syria in New York City more than 60 years ago, and was also the only person other than the main character's mother who has seen a rare bird. The main character struggles with so many things - his gender identity, finding out whether the bird really exists and finding out how his family is connected to the mysterious Laila, and acceptance within his own family and culture as well as racism and gentrification in New York.

Zeyn Joukhadar's writing is beautiful, gentle and symbolic, and the story truly is heart-wrenching, as it really makes you feel what it is like to be uncomfortable in your own body and unable to find a place where you can be yourself, more than any other LGBTQ+ or immigrant book I've read. The story contains so much that it is difficult to follow at times, but I would encourage other readers to stick with it as it does all come together in a beautiful way in the end.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for allowing me to read an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Thirty Names of Night is a heartfelt tale of two women. One is a modern NYC first-generation Syrian-American painter of birds, who feels her assigned gender is incorrect. The other, Laila, is telling the story of her life through her journal. Her story begins a century earlier in Syria. It ends in Little Syria in Manhattan.

How the two women are connected is the main puzzle in the book. However, the sumptuous prose and omnipresent bird imagery is what puts this book ahead of the usual immigrant finding him/herself tale. It is much more than that. It is really a mix of literary fiction, magical realism, LGBTQ+, and historical fiction with a fairytale.

I think the mix of genres is what is causing the wide swing in reviews. If you enjoy unconventional stories, you will be enchanted by Thirty Names of Night. It is filled with both genuine, and genuinely uncomfortable, scenes. 4 stars!

Thanks to Atria Books and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

An important novel that potentially is trying to tackle too much. I learned a LOT and it's inspiring me to pick up more books with similar themes. I needed a while to digest this one, but overall recommend giving it read!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for gifting me the latest novel by Zeyn Joukhadar. 3.5 stars rounded up for such gorgeous writing.

This is a very complex story told in two voices - a closeted Syrian American trans boy still haunted by the death of his mother, an ornithologist. Since her death, he has been unable to paint, except for a mural on an abandoned building at night. At the building site, he finds a journal from a famous painter, Lydia Z., who hasn't been seen in 60 years and who is the only other person who has seen the same rare bird as his mother did. In alternating chapters, we also hear Lydia's story, from her Syrian childhood to her American life. Birds are at the heart of this story - both the elusive ones, the painted and studied ones, and the ones who seem to be all around the NYC neighborhoods where the story takes place.

This is a hard book to review - it has some of the most beautiful sentences and descriptions I've ever read. But it was a challenge to read. It seems as if everyone in this book was not comfortable in their skins - whether they don't fit in because of their race, their gender struggles, their lifestyles. The Syrian language and customs in this book were also difficult for me - I really needed a glossary and my Kindle translator didn't work on any of the words! It was a bit confusing as well - there is much symbolism and spiritualism so that I wasn't always sure what was real. But again, the writing was beautiful and I think I just wasn't the right reader for this book.

This is a very unique book about a trans man who is coping with the loss of his mother and also coming out as a trans man. There also is a bit of a mystery to it as he tries to find an artist that his mother followed when she was alive. It is a very lyrical book, rich with imagery. There is a lot of bird imagery and body imagery as he navigates his feelings about his own body. There is also an immigrant narrative, we learn about the New York neighborhood of Little Syria. There is a lot going on, and it took me a long time to read, though I enjoyed it. It is a very thought provoking book. The author is a trans man and I believe is also Arabic so it is an own voices story. I am glad to have read this book. I do not think I have read anything else like it. I received a complimentary copy through the publisher from Netgalley.

Overall, I thought this was a very interesting book and one that I'm glad that exists (I mean, how many Syrian refugee/ LGBT/ magical realism books are out there?), but I did find it hard to get into and hard to stay interested. Could be just what you're looking for though.

Absolutely beautiful writing! I equally adored each storyline - which extends well beyond the main characters to their Syrian community and supportive LGBTQ peers & friends. The writing is very tender, honest, and thought provoking. The author does an impressive job of developing two storylines that intersect surrounding the premise of solving the mystery of an unidentified bird species that became so meaningful for multiple families in the demolition of their immigrant housing community.
I saved many quotes & ideas that made me think both about life in general and made me very thankful to better understand the perspective of others. I highly recommend this read for anyone & everyone.
“I think to myself, It is terrifying to be visible, and then I think, I have been waiting all my life to be seen.”

Thanks To NetGalley and Atria Books for the preview copy. This novel took me a bit to get into. The story seemed to be about birds, then it seemed to be about prejudice and anti-arab sentiment in the US, then it seemed to be about LGBTQ...and then I just got into the story and the characters. One piece that stuck with me was this "I think to myself, It is terrifying to be visible, and then I think, I have been waiting all my life to be seen." This sort of summed it up for me, for the women who were invisible, for the search for the new species of bird, for the search for the print, for one another.

The storyline pulled together so beautifully at the end that I totally forgive it for my occasional confusion. Following the lives of three generations of Syrian Americans living in New York City, this isn’t your typical immigrant story. It’s the story of how a community has changed as progress tore apart the old community, but more than that it’s the story of learning self-acceptance for who you are, whether or not you were born into the right sex. As I watched Nadir rebel against his female body and came to the slow realization that his grandmother also cared for a female although remaining traditionally female, I had my first realistic view of what life for people who are uncomfortable in the role society places on them. I struggled with the gender-neutral pronouns, but the more I was immersed in the story the more it became normal. And most of all I found Joukhader to be a compassionate, caring author in making characters come to life.

'I have been waiting all my life to be seen.'

This is the story of three generations of Arab-Americans told through two timelines and through the experiences of a young trans man and a talented artist named Laila. Their two stories are intertwined in the novel, joined by their love for art and ornithology. The book is beautifully written with fascinating, heart-breaking characters. Joukhadar writes about the Arab-American experience but also about finding one's personal identity. 'I am a fool. I spent so many years feeling alone, not knowing how to ask the right questions. Even now, if I admit that I have spent a lifetime denying myself, I will also have to grieve the time I lost trying to become someone else.' There is much going on in this novel, including a bit of mystery and romance and a touch of magical realism.

I received an arc of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Many thanks.

📚 Beautiful writing, particularly the descriptions of birds and the paintings of them.
📚 This is an #ownvoices book, and the portrayal of a trans boy who isn't out yet feels so real - the delicacy of the situation is tangible.
📚 The way the two storylines interweaved was masterful, and I was in tears at the end.
📚 I don't think I've ever read a story about a queer Syrian American and I'm so glad this book exists now.
📚 I just cannot find the words to adequately express to you how beautiful THE THIRTY NAMES OF NIGHT is. Please read it if you can.

Content warnings: miscarriage, deadnaming, Islamophobia, animal death, death, grief, xenophobia, transphobia, sexual assault.

Know in advance that you might feel a bit at sea periodically in this tale of a young man and his mother, both of whom are searching for their own place in a confusing world. Set largely in the little Syria section of New York it moves back and forth in time between the narrator and Laila, the artist whose diary he has discovered. His mother, an ornithologist, died five years ago; Laila was her favorite artist because she was an expect at painting birds, a recurrent theme. I'm not sure if there isn't too much happening (and yet not much at all)- there's the issues facing trans people, immigrants, lost parents, love and so on. It's not an easy read by any means but there's some gorgeous imagery and lovely writing. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

I never thought I would find a book that combines my favorite things: LGBTQ+ characters, well written historical fiction, diverse characters with stories that span the globe. I will be honest, at first I struggled to get into the book but then I became hooked and couldn’t stop reading.

The Thirty Names of Night is one of those oddly-niche books that took me on a small internet scavenger hunt because I was curious to know if it was ownvoices before I read it. Thankfully, it is. It follows a trans Syrian-American boy who lives in Brooklyn as he cares for his grandma after the death of his mother five years ago. He sees his mother’s ghost, and since her death, he’s not able to paint. She was an ornithologist, and he gets caught up in a diary of another Syrian immigrant who found a rare bird that his mother was also looking for, and in the process finds a trans community and the courage to change his name and come out.

I really enjoyed this. Yes, there’s a lot happening but it’s not all that hard to follow, you just have to pay attention. And I didn’t find that hard to do since I genuinely enjoyed the story and found a good learning opportunity as I went along (this is wildly outside of my own experience so I hung on every word!) My one criticism of this novel is that it’s written in present tense and that, for whatever reason, rarely works for me. I feel like I’m always waiting for the author to accidentally slip into past tense and I have a hard time falling into the story when it’s written in present tense.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to review this book! I look forward to more by this author. I learned a lot about cultures and experiences that aren’t my own in a very pleasant way and I feel comfortable in the idea that I can trust the narrative to not be harmful.

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.

As a Syrian American trans man marks the fifth anniversary of his mother’s death, he decides it’s time to leave his birth name behind and search for a new name. In searching for himself, he also discovers more information about the strange birds his mother died trying to save—and the queer history of his own family and community.

It's so amazing to read multiple queer stories from different times and places woven together. Joukhadar's beautiful prose conveys how freeing it is to live as yourself, even if the world tries to stop you. My only struggle with this book is that there is SO MUCH going on between the various timelines, metaphors, and histories, and the two different narrative voices are similar enough to make it a little hard to follow at times. Regardless, this is a story that needs to be told, and I'm so grateful that Zeyn Joukhadar chose to tell it.

This is a beautiful book that I probably should have read in fewer, longer sittings. Joukhadar does such a good job of putting the experience of gender dysphoria to words that it hits you physically even if its not something you know personally. Another I'll be happy to purchase for our LGBTQIA+ group.