The Thirty Names of Night

I loved Zeyn Joukhadar‘s debut novel, The Map of Salt and Stars, a few years ago, and I was excited to read more from him. His second book is The Thirty Names of Night, divided between two timelines and countries. In the present day, a closeted trans boy is searching for a new name and trying to regain his love for painting, five years after his mom died in a suspicious fire. His mom was an ornithologist, and he’s looking into her unfinished research on a mysterious bird—one she saw before dying—and the journals of a woman from decades earlier. Now with the name Nadir, our protagonist and his friends are determined to find out the long-buried truth. In the other timeline, Laila Z left Syria in the 1930s, and went on to draw stunning pictures of North American birds…. including the same one Nadir’s mother saw, one whose existence has never been verified. And strangely, Laila Z also died after seeing that very bird. What is the connection between both women and this rarely seen bird?

Review

Like the author’s previous book, The Thirty Names of Night is at once beautiful and lyrical. But although it can feel magical at times, this is not fantasy; it’s a work of evocative literary fiction with a strong sense of mystique.

Perhaps the most readily apparent points in this novel are the intertwined mysteries between Nadir’s mother, Laila Z, and the strange bird. I loved getting to know more about birds here, and especially the enigmatic bird both woman chased and died after seeing. Is this bird a harbinger of death? Is it even real? From ornithology to avian drawings, there’s a lot about our feathered friends and an ever-tightening mystery connecting both women.

Another theme that stood out is the look at gender identity and how to come out to people. Nadir is a trans boy, but he’s still working out how tell those around him. His grandma and his friends are close, but are they ready to know his full truth? How will they react? In the parallel timeline, Laila Z also has experiences with gender identity and sexuality within the Syrian expat community. Knowing this, Nadir realizes that he isn’t so alone after all.

Final Thoughts

Between Syrian culture, gender identity, and the mysteries of a possibly death-bringing bird, The Thirty Names of Night is a layered and engrossing novel that defies genres. With its poetic writing style, it’s otherworldly yet vivid. Zeyn Joukhadar has agian proven himself as a singular author. I look forward to reading more from him.

Get the Book

You can buy The Thirty Names of Night here – it’s available as a hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar
Audience	Adult
Genre	Literary Fiction
Setting	New York
Number of Pages	304
Format I Read	Hardcover
Original Publication Date	November 24, 2020

Official Summary

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. He has been unable to paint since his mother’s ghost has begun to visit him each evening. 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.

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 the birds of North America. She famously and 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—and his grandmother’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 officially 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 storytelling, The Thirty Names of Night is a timely exploration of how we all search for and ultimately embrace who we are.