After many searches, most of them unsuccessful, it seems that I´ve finally find my 2021 first favorite read. Delivered to me as an audiobook.
A Syrian-American trans-boy is reckoning with his past, present and family, while symbolically accompanied in spirit by his ornothologist mother killed a couple of years ago. There are everyday stories which intersects in an immaterial time with Layla Z.´s, whose diary is read alternatively. The secret roads uniting them, and in dead, his mother, is the search for a bird whose existence most thought it is impossible. United by their background, the food knitting their destiny together, the love for arts and the search for mysterious birds, the main protagonists of the story are threading their story.
As I had access to the book in audio format, read alternatively by Lameece Issaq and Samy Figaredo, I felt more than once the need to hear again some fragments. The beauty of the writing itself is unique, as it combines a story in itself adorned by the beauty of the wording. One feels how the story grows up, from the very beginning until the end. Although there are many topics approaches, among which the coming out of the closet of the unnamed narrator - because his given name does not fit him any more - is one of them.
The pace of the story reminds of a fable, an old mythical tale transposed in a modern city, where sometimes sparrows may be falling out of the sky. The 12th century allegorical poem by the Persian poet Attar of Nishapur (that I have to review on the blog one of those days), The Conference of the Birds is mentioned more than once, is the main poetical references in the book, as a reminder for the knowledgeable reader that we are reading more than a simple migration/gender identity story.
I rarely, if ever, read a book twice. Most probably, The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar will be one of the very few. Until then, I would definitely check very soon the other books by this author.
Rating: 4.5 stars
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