Among the many things the violence of war obliterates, perhaps the most malicious is history. Now in its seventh year, the civil war that has turned Syria into the site of one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises has also corseted one of the oldest societies on earth into a kind of perpetual infancy. Syria, it sometimes seems, only began to exist seven years ago, as a place defined only by its current calamity.

In many ways, The Map of Salt and Stars is at once a testament to the brutality of the current Syrian conflict and a reverent ode to ancient Arabian history. Syrian-American writer Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar has crafted an audacious debut, ambitious and sprawling in both time and space.

The book follows the story of Nour, a Syrian-American girl living in New York. In 2011, after Nour loses her father to cancer, her mother decides to move the family back to Homs to be close to their extended family. But Nour’s arrival coincides with Syria’s slide into civil war. Amid grotesque violence, Nour is made a refugee, a traveler through Syria’s neighboring lands.

Almost a thousand years earlier, another girl’s story unfolds. Rawiya, seeking a better life for her mother, disguises herself as a boy and joins a legendary cartographer on a quest to map the known world.

The two stories unfold side by side, split by time but joined by a common geography. Because the modern part of Joukhadar’s narrative carries the urgency of the present tense, but the ancient half reads like an old Arabian fairy tale, the dual story structure is at first jarring. But soon the book finds its pace, and the intertwining tales complement each other in ways a single narrative could not. A swooping bird of prey that threatens to devour the ancient story’s traveling companions finds its modern-day analogy in the form of Syrian fighter planes dropping bombs on besieged cities.

There is a heartfelt quality to the story, evident in the meticulous historical research that must have gone into the creation of the ancient part of the book. The Map of Salt and Stars presents an Arab world in full possession of its immense historical and cultural biography, marred by its modern tragedies but not exclusively defined by them.

This article was originally published in the May 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

With the exceedingly rare exception of literary genius, a first novel from even the most gifted short story writer is a risky effort, and not always successful. This is why Jane Delury is deserving of recognition: With immense storytelling gifts and spare but luminous prose, she is one of the few writers whose debut will have readers begging for a second novel.

The Balcony unfolds in 10 nonchronological chapters—each of which could be a perfect short story—that introduce a cast of characters spanning several generations from 1890 to 2009. From great loves and fleeting lust to hunger and genocide, each character’s story is connected to a once lavish estate (including a servants’ cottage, a manor and, of course, a balcony) in the French countryside. Families appear, then reappear in later chapters: “A Place in the Country” introduces the Havres, whose descendants and lasting heartbreak thread throughout several other sections. The actions of a World War II resistance hero affect the lives of his grandsons, whose own children continue to bear the weight of choices made before them.

The Balcony beckons readers to abandon preconceptions about generational legacies, motherhood and the ideal, pastoral French village. Benneville, the fictional setting of Delury’s novel, was nearly destroyed by bombs during World War II and, a generation later, is a hardscrabble, industrial exurb of Paris in the midst of gentrification. As Delury describes, it’s far from charming: “This was not exactly the country—Benneville had grown since Jacques was a boy, moving closer to Paris on a wave of concrete.”

The final chapter of The Balcony is written in a dramatically different freeform style, and some readers will wish for a more satisfying ending without Delury’s sudden embrace of a quirky, unconventional structure. However, this is a small concern, and readers are more likely to lament that the novel has come to a close, leaving them longing for more.

Delury is sure to win the hearts of all those who appreciate a smart, elegantly written story.

This article was originally published in the April 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In the current political climate, the need for novels that cast light on the immigrant experience is greater than ever. Contemporary literature has had its share of such works in recent years, from Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers to Lesley Nneka Arimah’s magnificent story collection, What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky. The latest is Elaine Castillo’s debut novel, America Is Not the Heart, a timely book about a prominent family from the Philippines and the circumstances that lead them to America.

The novel—its title a play on America Is in the Heart, a 1946 semi-autobiographical novel by Filipino-American author Carlos Bulosan—begins with Paz, who is studying to become a nurse. While still in the Philippines, she meets her future husband, Pol De Vera, a talented orthopedic surgeon and “the Don Juan of the hospital.” Once they move to California, their roles reverse: Paz becomes the family breadwinner, while Pol works as a security guard. Their lives change further when, in 1990, they invite Hero, their niece thought to have died years earlier, to stay with them on a tourist visa.

Hero’s story is the focus of the novel, as she develops a close friendship with Roni, the couple’s 7-year-old daughter, and accompanies Roni on visits to faith healers who seek to cure the child’s eczema. Hero begins a relationship with Rosalyn, the daughter of one of the healers.

Castillo incorporates snippets of the Tagalog, Ilocano and Pangasinan languages throughout her tale, and some of the novel’s most memorable scenes depict the decade Hero spends with an armed resistance group that fights against dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ government. If Castillo overdoes some details—she references food too often—America Is Not the Heart is still an earnest contribution to the ongoing discussion of immigrant life in America.

This article was originally published in the April 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

At the core of Shobha Rao’s magnificent and heart-wrenching debut novel is a unique friendship forged between two young women from a small Indian village. Poornima and Savitha’s bond sustains them despite insurmountable odds; their first obstacle is simply being born into a community that celebrates the births of sons but considers daughters as objects to be married off as soon as possible.

After 15-year-old Poornima’s mother dies and the traditional year of mourning has passed, her father contacts the local matchmaker to find her a suitable husband. At the same time, Poornima meets Savitha, who is a year older than Poornima and from an even poorer family. With three younger sisters, a chronically ill father and a mother who cleans houses, Savitha is forced to scour the garbage dumps daily for food, or perhaps something to sell.

Poornima’s father, a sari weaver, is looking for someone to sit at his dead wife’s loom to help increase his output, so Savitha fills that position and becomes Poornima’s close friend. Despite her dire circumstances, Savitha is full of joy and hope—feelings that Poornima has all but forgotten.

When a probable match for Poornima is found in a distant village, the girls plan ways to stay in touch after the marriage. But suddenly Savitha becomes the victim of a horrific crime, and she disappears—without telling Poornima where she is going.

Rao fills the second half of her captivating novel with the devastating circumstances that engulf these young women over the next several years. From extreme cruelty to kidnapping and entrapment in a sexual slavery ring, each traumatic experience keeps them separated by thousands of miles, and finding a way to meet again seems impossible.

Girls Burn Brighter focuses an enlightening lens on contemporary headlines that often seem abstract. Readers of Rao’s vital, vibrant novel will not soon forget these two strong, driven young women.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Behind the Book essay from Shobha Rao on Girls Burn Brighter.

This article was originally published in the March 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In their debut novel, Akwaeke Emezi offers a haunting yet stunning exploration of mental illness grounded in traditional Nigerian spirituality. This semi-autobiographical work centers on Ada, a Nigerian girl of Igbo ethnicity whose nature is both human and divine. She was born with multiple selves, each under the domain of a different ogbanje, dark spirits of the Igbo belief system.

Though claiming dominion over Ada’s body and soul, the ogbanje lay relatively dormant until she moves from Nigeria to a small town in Virginia for college. While there, a violent sexual encounter with an Eritrean-Danish romantic partner unleashes Asughara, the mischievous, hypersexual and most dominant of the ogbanje. Controlling Ada’s thoughts and actions, Asughara sends Ada on a descent toward insanity that includes self-mutilation, multiple lost relationships and ultimately a total loss of self-control.

Ada’s story is told by her multiple selves through alternating chapters. Employing precise and poetic yet accessible prose, Emezi brilliantly crafts distinct voices for each of Ada’s selves and puts them in conversation with each other. The multiple perspectives and swift pace of the prose lead to calculated confusion in the reader that mimics the movement of Ada’s consciousness. As such, Emezi’s particular use of structure and language allows the reader to not only witness but also experience the battle of incongruent identities that define Ada’s mental instability.

Emezi’s fusion of traditional Nigerian spirituality and Western understanding of mental illness is well executed. They treat the ogbanje not as novelty or fantasy, but rather as legitimate sources of Ada’s strife. They balance multiple lands, ethnicities, perspectives and belief systems with the ease of a writer far beyond their age and experience. Freshwater is a brutally beautiful rumination on consciousness and belief and a refreshing contribution to our literary landscape.