Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands

3.8/5 ( ratings)

Award-winning historical fantasy and literary folktale. Winner of the presigious Etisalat award. In a tent at the foot of a mountain in Palestine, hundreds of years ago, our storyteller and her twin sister are born. Her newlywed parents name her Qamr and her sister Shams . Their small caravan is journeying from the mother's city back to the father's remote ancestral village atop the mountain. This village suffers from isolation and a curse, which her young family tries to undo. But when both her parents' lives are cut short, Qamr and her sister are left orphans. And so, Qamr decides to pursue her mother's and father's dreams of discovering the world--its people and places, ideas and stories. With the red book in hand that brought her parents together, she sets out on a daring journey, on caravans and ships, across empires. Telling stories to survive, Qamr crosses deserts and seas: to Jerusalem and Gaza; Egypt, Tangier, Andalusia and Genoa; Abyssinia, India, the Maldives and Yemen. Kidnapped by bandits, sold as a slave to the House of a mad King, studying with a polymath, disguising as a man and falling in love for the first time--with a pirate: Qamr searches irrepressibly for life, in endless stories within stories. Like the famous travel narratives of the 14th century Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta, Sonia Nimr's award-winning Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands is a richly imagined feminist fable and a captivating, adventure-filled historical novel.