Literature & Fiction
![Zeyn Joukhadar - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B078BXF1QV.jpg)
The Thirty Names of Night: A Novel
Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction
Winner of the ALA 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 HuffPost
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.
Winner of the ALA 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 HuffPost
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.
Editorial Reviews
Chapter One ONE / 
TONIGHT, FIVE YEARS TO the day since I lost you, forty-eight white-throated sparrows fall from the sky. Tomorrow, the papers will count and photograph them, arrange them on black garbage bags and speculate on the causes of the blight. But for now, here on the roof of Teta's apartment building, the sheen of evening rain on the tar paper slicks the soles of my sneakers, and velvet arrows drop one by one from the autumn migration sweeping over Boerum Hill.
The sparrows thud onto the houses around me, old three- and four-story brownstones, generation homes with sculpted stoops, a handful recently bought from the families who have owned them for decades and gutted for resale. Nothing has stayed the way it was since you died, not even the way we grieve you. Downstairs in Teta's apartment, I've drawn the curtains, tucked Teta's glasses back into their drawer so that even if she wakes, she won't look down on this street dashed with dying birds. Five years ago, when your absence stitched her mouth shut for weeks, I hid your collection of feathers, hid the preserved shells of robin's eggs, hid the specimens of bone. Each egg was its own shade of blue; I slipped them into a shoebox under my bed. When you were alive, the warmth of each shell held the thrill of possibility. I first learned to mix paint by matching the smooth turquoise of a heron's egg: first aqua, then celadon, then cooling the warmth of cadmium yellow with phthalo blue. When you died, Teta quoted Attar: The self has passed away in the beloved. Tonight, the sparrows' feathers are brushstrokes on the dark. This evening is its own witness, the birds' throats stars on the canvas of the night. They clap into cars and crash through skylights, thunk into steel trash cans with the lids off, slice through the branches of boxed-in gingkoes. Gravity snaps shut their wings. The evening's fog smears the city to blinding. Migrating birds, you used to say, the city's light can kill.
A sparrow's beak strikes my hand and gashes my palm. I clutch the wound, the meat of my thumb dark with my own blood. You taught me a long time ago to identify the species by the yellow patches around their eyes, their black whiskers, their white throats, and their ivory crowns. You were the one who taught me to imitate their calls-Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody. In your career as an ornithologist, you taught me two dozen East Coast birdcalls, things I thought you'd always be here to teach me. I reach down to sco...
TONIGHT, FIVE YEARS TO the day since I lost you, forty-eight white-throated sparrows fall from the sky. Tomorrow, the papers will count and photograph them, arrange them on black garbage bags and speculate on the causes of the blight. But for now, here on the roof of Teta's apartment building, the sheen of evening rain on the tar paper slicks the soles of my sneakers, and velvet arrows drop one by one from the autumn migration sweeping over Boerum Hill.
The sparrows thud onto the houses around me, old three- and four-story brownstones, generation homes with sculpted stoops, a handful recently bought from the families who have owned them for decades and gutted for resale. Nothing has stayed the way it was since you died, not even the way we grieve you. Downstairs in Teta's apartment, I've drawn the curtains, tucked Teta's glasses back into their drawer so that even if she wakes, she won't look down on this street dashed with dying birds. Five years ago, when your absence stitched her mouth shut for weeks, I hid your collection of feathers, hid the preserved shells of robin's eggs, hid the specimens of bone. Each egg was its own shade of blue; I slipped them into a shoebox under my bed. When you were alive, the warmth of each shell held the thrill of possibility. I first learned to mix paint by matching the smooth turquoise of a heron's egg: first aqua, then celadon, then cooling the warmth of cadmium yellow with phthalo blue. When you died, Teta quoted Attar: The self has passed away in the beloved. Tonight, the sparrows' feathers are brushstrokes on the dark. This evening is its own witness, the birds' throats stars on the canvas of the night. They clap into cars and crash through skylights, thunk into steel trash cans with the lids off, slice through the branches of boxed-in gingkoes. Gravity snaps shut their wings. The evening's fog smears the city to blinding. Migrating birds, you used to say, the city's light can kill.
A sparrow's beak strikes my hand and gashes my palm. I clutch the wound, the meat of my thumb dark with my own blood. You taught me a long time ago to identify the species by the yellow patches around their eyes, their black whiskers, their white throats, and their ivory crowns. You were the one who taught me to imitate their calls-Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody. In your career as an ornithologist, you taught me two dozen East Coast birdcalls, things I thought you'd always be here to teach me. I reach down to sco...
Readers Top Reviews
Cathy Shields
I loved this story. A tale of immigration, gentrification, of self-discovery, and surprisingly, a beautiful story of birds. I loved the Arabic phrases, descriptions of food and custom.
Denver Hawkeye
I bought this as a potential book club selection based on many good reviews and the possibility of good cross-cultural themes, but was greatly disappointed. I was probably only 1/4 of the way through the book when I gave it up.
Tannermizmac#1
Sometimes, I hate "rating" things. The story is enjoyable and heart warming at times. There are some great lines I have highlighted and the author has put much effort in imagery. It is easy to be in the same space as the characters. I hope this falls into the hands of people who do not "get" trans and also some youth who could use some support and encouragement. It is very important to have identities represented in a positive manner within all facets of society. I applaud you, Zeyn. My rating is personal. This genre just must not be my cup of tea. I wasn't able to jump into the book as much as I wanted; However, I like that the chapters were split up in vignettes. It was easier for me to stop and look up things did not know or just read for a short time without losing the story. For some reason it was way easier for me to read the chapters on Laila. I looked up every bird. I now follow some bird pages on Instagram - so thank you! I learned a lot of cultural things I had absolutely no knowledge of and I plan to read Attar's, The Conference of the Birds. Although I would not be inclined to read it twice, this book has created some interest in new things for me.
ophelia99
I have reached an age where I feel the clock ticking and don't want to waste time reading junk. I want beauty. I want a story with substance, with characters who breath and sweat and feel like someone I might know. This multilayered novel, existing in two different eras, deals with so many very human issues, loss, love, being a sexual and gender minority within a community where the religious traditions are not friendly, yet are largely what ties the community together, is beautifully woven together.
Marzie
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.
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter One ONE /
TONIGHT, FIVE YEARS TO the day since I lost you, forty-eight white-throated sparrows fall from the sky. Tomorrow, the papers will count and photograph them, arrange them on black garbage bags and speculate on the causes of the blight. But for now, here on the roof of Teta's apartment building, the sheen of evening rain on the tar paper slicks the soles of my sneakers, and velvet arrows drop one by one from the autumn migration sweeping over Boerum Hill.
The sparrows thud onto the houses around me, old three- and four-story brownstones, generation homes with sculpted stoops, a handful recently bought from the families who have owned them for decades and gutted for resale. Nothing has stayed the way it was since you died, not even the way we grieve you. Downstairs in Teta's apartment, I've drawn the curtains, tucked Teta's glasses back into their drawer so that even if she wakes, she won't look down on this street dashed with dying birds. Five years ago, when your absence stitched her mouth shut for weeks, I hid your collection of feathers, hid the preserved shells of robin's eggs, hid the specimens of bone. Each egg was its own shade of blue; I slipped them into a shoebox under my bed. When you were alive, the warmth of each shell held the thrill of possibility. I first learned to mix paint by matching the smooth turquoise of a heron's egg: first aqua, then celadon, then cooling the warmth of cadmium yellow with phthalo blue. When you died, Teta quoted Attar: The self has passed away in the beloved. Tonight, the sparrows' feathers are brushstrokes on the dark. This evening is its own witness, the birds' throats stars on the canvas of the night. They clap into cars and crash through skylights, thunk into steel trash cans with the lids off, slice through the branches of boxed-in gingkoes. Gravity snaps shut their wings. The evening's fog smears the city to blinding. Migrating birds, you used to say, the city's light can kill.
A sparrow's beak strikes my hand and gashes my palm. I clutch the wound, the meat of my thumb dark with my own blood. You taught me a long time ago to identify the species by the yellow patches around their eyes, their black whiskers, their white throats, and their ivory crowns. You were the one who taught me to imitate their calls-Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody. In your career as an ornithologist, you taught me two dozen East Coast birdcalls, things I thought you'd always be here to teach me. I reach down to scoop the sparrow from the rooftop with my bloodied hands. He weighs almost nothing. There is so much of you-and, therefore, of myself-that I will never know.
Tomorrow, when the ghost of you enters my window with the smell of rain, I will tell you how, since you died, the birds have never left me. The sparrows are the most recent of a long chain of moments into which the birds, like you, have intruded: the red-tailed hawks perched on the fire escape above Sahadi's awning, or the female barred owl that alights on Borough Hall when I emerge from the subway. For all my prayers the night you died, the divine was nowhere to be found. The forty-eight white-throated sparrows that plummet from the sky are my only companions in grief tonight, the omen that keeps me from leaning out into the air.
My gynecologist is using purple gloves again. They are the only color in this all-white examination room. I set my feet in the stirrups with my knees together, only separating my thighs when he taps my foot. The paper gown crinkles. The white noise of my blood thrums in my ears. There is no rainbow-colored ceiling tile with dolphins here like the one at Teta's dentist. Last spring, I got my teeth cleaned while she had a root canal just so I could hold her hand.
I clench and unclench my sweaty fingers. The speculum is a rude column of ice. I focus on a pinprick of iodine staining the ceiling tile and force myself to imagine how it got there. I will myself out of my body the way I used to do when I was bleeding. The summer after you died, my periods were the heaviest they'd ever been. I spent the rainless evenings standing in fields at sunset, waiting to be raptured into the green flash of twilight, wishing there were another way to exist in the world than to be bodied. It had been less than a year since I'd closed my hand around those eggs in the nest, and still I wanted nothing more than to disappear into the weightless womb waiting inside each round, perfect egg...
TONIGHT, FIVE YEARS TO the day since I lost you, forty-eight white-throated sparrows fall from the sky. Tomorrow, the papers will count and photograph them, arrange them on black garbage bags and speculate on the causes of the blight. But for now, here on the roof of Teta's apartment building, the sheen of evening rain on the tar paper slicks the soles of my sneakers, and velvet arrows drop one by one from the autumn migration sweeping over Boerum Hill.
The sparrows thud onto the houses around me, old three- and four-story brownstones, generation homes with sculpted stoops, a handful recently bought from the families who have owned them for decades and gutted for resale. Nothing has stayed the way it was since you died, not even the way we grieve you. Downstairs in Teta's apartment, I've drawn the curtains, tucked Teta's glasses back into their drawer so that even if she wakes, she won't look down on this street dashed with dying birds. Five years ago, when your absence stitched her mouth shut for weeks, I hid your collection of feathers, hid the preserved shells of robin's eggs, hid the specimens of bone. Each egg was its own shade of blue; I slipped them into a shoebox under my bed. When you were alive, the warmth of each shell held the thrill of possibility. I first learned to mix paint by matching the smooth turquoise of a heron's egg: first aqua, then celadon, then cooling the warmth of cadmium yellow with phthalo blue. When you died, Teta quoted Attar: The self has passed away in the beloved. Tonight, the sparrows' feathers are brushstrokes on the dark. This evening is its own witness, the birds' throats stars on the canvas of the night. They clap into cars and crash through skylights, thunk into steel trash cans with the lids off, slice through the branches of boxed-in gingkoes. Gravity snaps shut their wings. The evening's fog smears the city to blinding. Migrating birds, you used to say, the city's light can kill.
A sparrow's beak strikes my hand and gashes my palm. I clutch the wound, the meat of my thumb dark with my own blood. You taught me a long time ago to identify the species by the yellow patches around their eyes, their black whiskers, their white throats, and their ivory crowns. You were the one who taught me to imitate their calls-Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody. In your career as an ornithologist, you taught me two dozen East Coast birdcalls, things I thought you'd always be here to teach me. I reach down to scoop the sparrow from the rooftop with my bloodied hands. He weighs almost nothing. There is so much of you-and, therefore, of myself-that I will never know.
Tomorrow, when the ghost of you enters my window with the smell of rain, I will tell you how, since you died, the birds have never left me. The sparrows are the most recent of a long chain of moments into which the birds, like you, have intruded: the red-tailed hawks perched on the fire escape above Sahadi's awning, or the female barred owl that alights on Borough Hall when I emerge from the subway. For all my prayers the night you died, the divine was nowhere to be found. The forty-eight white-throated sparrows that plummet from the sky are my only companions in grief tonight, the omen that keeps me from leaning out into the air.
My gynecologist is using purple gloves again. They are the only color in this all-white examination room. I set my feet in the stirrups with my knees together, only separating my thighs when he taps my foot. The paper gown crinkles. The white noise of my blood thrums in my ears. There is no rainbow-colored ceiling tile with dolphins here like the one at Teta's dentist. Last spring, I got my teeth cleaned while she had a root canal just so I could hold her hand.
I clench and unclench my sweaty fingers. The speculum is a rude column of ice. I focus on a pinprick of iodine staining the ceiling tile and force myself to imagine how it got there. I will myself out of my body the way I used to do when I was bleeding. The summer after you died, my periods were the heaviest they'd ever been. I spent the rainless evenings standing in fields at sunset, waiting to be raptured into the green flash of twilight, wishing there were another way to exist in the world than to be bodied. It had been less than a year since I'd closed my hand around those eggs in the nest, and still I wanted nothing more than to disappear into the weightless womb waiting inside each round, perfect egg...
