Reviews tagging 'War'

The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar

9 reviews

allisoncc's review

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death of parent, Islamophobia, Fire/Fire injury, Miscarriage, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Dysphoria, and Medical content

Moderate: Outing, Miscarriage, War, Racism, Pregnancy, Animal death, and Dementia

Minor: Chronic illness

camillatd's review

challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

The Thirty Names of Night is a rich, expansive, heart-opening novel. Our (initially) unnamed narrator is grieving his mother, seeking meaning in his art, and attempting to untangle a family secret. The novel moves between two voices: the present-day narrator and the artist Laila Z, whose journal entries he uncovers. With each diary entry he reads, our narrator comes closer to understanding his mother’s life and death, but he also comes closer to understanding (and embracing) himself and his transness. Joukhadar really masterfully weaves together past and present, creating a striking narrative of family, migration, and intergenerational queerness. Both timelines and narrators felt equally crucial to the story, which I think is really hard to achieve in a novel. I felt so connected to these characters and so invested in their journeys.

While this novel contains a lot of pain (from gender dysphoria to grief to racism and xenophobia), it’s full of love and beauty. The novel is rich with symbolism, birds and ghosts and paintings and flowers and secrets, scenes that took my breath away.

This was another book that allowed me to sit in the wise grief/wise joy that I’ve been reflecting on since I read Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar: “I hope that when there is laughter, it’s laughter made wise by having known real grief—and when there if grief, it is made wise by having known real joy.”

This is a novel about community, and how caring for each other and making art is a form of resistance. Moving from Syria to New York City to Dearborn, Michigan, the story explores how community ties are enshrined in structures, but how they also transcend buildings, places, and cities. Joukhadar also crafts a moving narrative of queer resilience across time and place. The novel’s cast of predominantly queer and trans characters carve out space and community and love and family for themselves, in deeply queer and deeply beautiful ways. Queer and trans people have always been here, and we always will be.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Dysphoria, War, Transphobia, and Grief

Moderate: Homophobia, Fire/Fire injury, Transphobia, Death, and Sexual content

zombiezami's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Xenophobia, Grief, Misogyny, Pregnancy, Injury/Injury detail, Animal death, Medical content, Blood, Gaslighting, Sexism, Violence, Death, Death of parent, Dysphoria, Fire/Fire injury, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Sexual harassment, Police brutality, Suicidal thoughts, Bullying, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Transphobia

Minor: War, Mass/school shootings, Colonisation, and Dementia

Colorism

singlier's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

The Thirty Names of Night 4.5/5 🪶s

Oh my goodness. I loved this book. It is beautiful: a reflective mingling of past and present explored through alternating POVs of a two Syrian artists: one, a sapphic immigrant who fled Syrian during the French/Syrian war and the other, a closeted trans man struggling under the grief of his mother's death. It is a story about loss, which means it is a story about love: lost loves, familial love, love of our communities, love of ourselves. On the five-year anniversary of his mother's death, the man finds the journal of the Syrian immigrant and discovers his life and her life are irreparably intertwined through their shared obsession of a rare bird: a bird his mother died before she could prove it was real. What follows is a parallel narrative between past and present, unfolding the lives of both artists as they attempt to unravel their own identities admist the complex and varied social pressures of their varied eras. 

The only reason this book isn't a full five stars for me is that, despite how beautiful it is to read, it is SLOW.  It's a very reflective piece, and I loved the real-world history that went into the creation of this book, but even I at times found myself skipping ahead to get to the next piece of the mystery. I still do highly recommend it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death

Moderate: Dysphoria, Grief, Blood, Classism, Deadnaming, Death of parent, Sexual assault, and War

noah_silver's review against another edition

challenging emotional inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.75

I liked the two interwoven timelines, the development and growth of the two main characters & their different voices, the different kinds of queerness coming up during the story - and the focus on & omnipresence of birds in the lives of the characters.
However, at some points I found it a bit slow and am still confused about some turns of the story. It might be due to listening to it as an audio book and maybe not catching everything. I was also not completely convinced of the audio book narrator's styles.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Islamophobia, Racism, Animal death, Grief, Death of parent, and Dysphoria

Minor: Miscarriage, Homophobia, Child death, Transphobia, and War

Description of menstruation; gyn appointment

jojo_'s review against another edition

emotional mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Hate crime, Racism, Xenophobia, Animal death, Blood, Classism, Death of parent, Dysphoria, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, and Islamophobia

Moderate: Misogyny, Cancer, and Homophobia

Minor: Transphobia, Deadnaming, War, and Dementia

denteaste's review

emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

i don't think i have the words to write how beautifully written this book was 

the characters are complex and interesting and very human in their flaws and their quest of trying to find a meaning to life itself, the representation feels organic and it is so important to show that LGBTQ+ people were not invented in the 2000s 

the two stories were nicely woven in one another, with a touch of a magical realism 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Miscarriage, Death, Dysphoria, Grief, and Death of parent

Moderate: Xenophobia, Islamophobia, Fire/Fire injury, Transphobia, Violence, and War

Minor: Dementia

laurareads87's review against another edition

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The Thirty Names of Night is stunning -- beautiful writing, well structured, nuanced and well-developed characters and a clear setting.  The story alternates between two perspectives -- that of a young Syrian-American trans man living in contemporary-ish Little Syria in NYC, and that of Laila Z, a Syrian American artist who painted and drew birds and who disappeared decades prior.  Both are written in second person, with Nadir addressing his deceased mother and Laila Z's chapters in epistolary format.  This book had me in tears more than once (in the best possible way), and Joukhadar has handled many themes here -- immigration, loss, xenophobia, the pain of contorting oneself to fit gendered expectations, struggles with religion, grief, internalized and external trans- & homophobia, family (birth and chosen) -- so beautifully.  I am immensely grateful to Zeyn Joukhadar for this book, and look forward to reading more from him.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Blood, Death, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Hate crime, Homophobia, Islamophobia, Lesbophobia, Medical content, Misogyny, Pregnancy, Racism, Sexism, and Transphobia

Moderate: Sexual assault and Sexual violence

Minor: War

seawarrior's review

challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This is such a beautiful book. Multiple times I re-read passages to ensure I fully absorbed their words and weight. The pages shine with poetry and reflections on grief, and end more rewardingly than I had dared to hope. I highly suggest reading. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Blood, Colonisation, Death of parent, Dysphoria, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Hate crime, Islamophobia, Lesbophobia, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Pregnancy, Sexual harassment, War, Xenophobia, and Racism

Moderate: Homophobia, Sexual assault, Cancer, and Dementia