Stranger in the Desert

Town and Country, A Must Read Book for 2024
Zibby Mag, A Most Anticipated Title of the Year
Bookshop, A Most Anticipated Title of the Year

“Part intensely personal memoir, part history, Salama’s search to learn more about who he came from will connect with readers.” —Katie Moench, Book Riot

“A nonchronological personal narrative rather than a standard travel memoir, Stranger in the Desert is a reflection on family history, identity, and storytelling.” —Laura Chanoux, Booklist

“Readers will be left musing on their own family histories, perhaps wondering what they might discover if they were to follow a loose thread or two.” —Shelf Awareness

“Salama’s rapport with readers remains unquestioned. An accomplished sophomore effort from an unusually gifted young writer.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Stranger in the Desert is a beautiful, soulful story ranging across continents and languages, topographies and etymologies, time and space. Through a pastiche of maps, diaries, and archival materials, Jordan Salama attempts to piece together a lost family history, and the result is both delightfully idiosyncratic yet somehow still universal, revealing a great deal about the elusive concepts of identity and home, and what it means to find one’s place in the world by following one’s roots.” —Jennifer Senior, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author

“Salama has a precocious curiosity about his family’s past and a journalist’s determination to hit the road in search of it. His book is at once a young man’s quest for identity and a travelogue that tenderly evokes the sights, sounds, and stories of his ancestors’ worlds.” —Ariel Sabar, author of My Father’s Paradise