The Storm

by Arif Anwar

"Seamlessly interweaves five love stories that, together, chronicle sixty years of Bangladeshi history. Shahryar, a recent PhD graduate and father of nine-year-old Anna, must leave the US when his visa expires. In their last remaining weeks together, we learn Shahryar's history, in a village on the Bay of Bengal, where a poor fisherman and his wife are preparing to face a storm of historic proportions. That story intersects with those of a Japanese pilot, a British doctor stationed in Burma during World War II, and a privileged couple in Calcutta who leaves everything behind to move to East Pakistan following the Partition of India. Inspired by the 1970 Bhola cyclone, in which half a million-people perished overnight, the structure of this riveting novel mimics the storm itself. Building to a series of revelatory and moving climaxes, it shows the many ways in which families love, betray, honor, and sacrifice for one another. At once grounded in history and fantastically imaginative, The Storm explores the humanity that connects us beyond the surface differences of race, religion, and nationality. It is an epic novel in the tradition of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner and Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, by a singularly gifted and perceptive new writer.--

• ISBN10: 1501174509
• ISBN13: 9781501174506
• Publish Date: 15 May 2018
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

[jnkay01]

From my AP review: https://bit.ly/2wKObHF

I’ve covered hurricanes in Miami for nearly 15 years, and I expected Anwar, who was born in Bangladesh and has worked with large non-governmental organizations on poverty and public health issues, to delve into the details of that storm, which should still serve as a cautionary tale for coastal communities. The storm data seems a rich mine for storytelling: hostile relations between India and what was then East Pakistan that hindered communications about hazardous conditions, how the storm’s landfall took so many by surprise, or its legacy as one of the world’s deadliest natural disasters.

But Anwar doesn’t take such a macro view of the storm. It’s a catalyst for the narrative, but it’s also something that happens almost entirely offstage.

Instead, Anwar drills down to an almost microscopic viewpoint to explore Bangladesh’s struggle for independence through intimate, interconnected stories that span 60 years.

The result is less like a catastrophic flood and more like an illustration of the butterfly effect: a Japanese pilot crashing his plane in World War II ripples through the lives of a British doctor, a poor fisherman and his wife, a wealthy couple displaced by the Partition of India and a doctoral student trying to navigate U.S. immigration policy to stay with his U.S.-born daughter in the wake of Sept. 11. The fears they face and the choices they make loom larger than any weather phenomenon.