The Map of Salt and Stars
by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar Touchstone , 2018 Genre: Novel This is a story of survival as a refugee family from Syria, but it is also about the gift and art of storytelling. The central narrator, Nour, provides a parallel narrative about an imagined earlier time occupied by a character named Rawiya. The story of Rawiya was given to Nour in oral form by her beloved father, Baba, who has recently died. While Nour is enduring the pain of war and strife in Syria, Rawiya journeys toward fortune as a young explorer accompanying a mapmaker. She wants to earn enough money to return home and help her family. Nour's mother is also a mapmaker, and her work is the primary income for their family. One of my immediate pleasures in opening the novel is the map provided on the inside cover, with the blue of the Mediterranean spread across two pages, and its accompanying cities (Benghazi, Tripoli, Palermo, Cordoba, etc.) appearing gracefully at the edges. The Atlas Mountains and the Sahara captur...