Thunderbird: Book One

by Sonia Nimr, M. Lynx Qualey (Translator)

Overview

Shortlisted for the 2023 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, Society of Authors

A Palestinian girl travels to the past in a magical quest to save the world.

The Thunderbird trilogy is a fast-paced time-traveling fantasy adventure centered on Noor, a young orphaned Palestinian girl who starts in the present and must go back in time to get four magical bird feathers and save the world. Aided by a djinn cat and girls who look identical to Noor and who each have one of the bird’s powers, in this initial volume Noor begins her journey through different historical periods, striving to keep the wall between worlds intact.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781477325810
Publisher:	Ctr for Middle Eastern Studies UT-Austin
Publication date:	04/26/2022
Series:	Emerging Voices from the Middle East
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	11 - 13 Years

About the Author

Sonia Nimr is a Palestinian writer, storyteller, translator, ethnographer and academic. She writes for children and youth in Arabic and English and relates folktales in colloquial Arabic. She is the winner of the 2014 Etisalat Award for Children’s Literature for Best Young Adult Book for her book Extraordinary Journeys to Unknown Places. Nimr is an associate professor of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Birzeit University.

M. Lynx Qualey holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota and, in addition to guiding Arab Lit, covers Arabic literature for The Guardian. Her writing also appears in Al Jazeera, The New Republic, Your Middle East, and AGNI, Boston University’s online journal.

Editorial Reviews

2022-03-02
A grieving girl, a djinn disguised as a cat, a kindly professor, and a time-travel quest form the heart of this atmospheric trilogy opener from Palestine translated from the Arabic.

Thirteen-year-old Noor has been bereft since her parents were killed in a plane crash two years earlier while traveling to London to share their exciting discoveries about the thunderbird, or phoenix, of ancient Philistine legend. She’s been nurtured by her loving grandmother, but when Teita dies, Noor is at the mercy of her weak-willed uncle, spiteful aunt, and jealous cousin. Worse, fires keep breaking out in Noor’s vicinity—although she staunchly denies responsibility. The arrival of a talking black cat and discovery of a phoenix design on her late father’s ring, which Teita gave her shortly before she died, send her to Dr. Samir, her late parents’ anthropologist friend in the West Bank. Dr. Samir and Noor investigate, learning that she’s connected to a prophecy about an imminent threat to the barrier between the human and djinn worlds. They brave the Israeli checkpoint to reach a Jerusalem museum where Noor is transported through a portal to the 16th century amid conflict between the Mamluks and Ottomans. She meets her doppelgänger, Andaleeb, and the girls seek the world-saving phoenix feathers. This richly descriptive novel paints a moving portrait of a lost, lonely girl; a historic land with a painful past and present; and an enchanting magical world. The cliffhanger ending will leave readers eager for more.

Intriguing, textured, and immersive. (Fantasy. 11-13)

Kirkus Reviews