The Storm

A Novel

By: Arif Anwar

Narrated by: Vikas Adam, Soneela Nankani

From an immensely talented new voice in international fiction, this “fascinating, ambitious” (The New York Times Book Review) and epic novel seamlessly interweaves five love stories that, together, chronicle sixty years of Bangladeshi history—for fans of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance.

Shahryar, a recent PhD graduate and father of nine-year-old Anna, must leave the United States 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 “moves us deftly through time and across borders, beautifully illustrating the strange intersections we call fate, and reminding us how the past shapes the present” (Rumaan Alam, author of Rich and Pretty). Exploring the human­ity that connects us beyond the surface differences of race, religion, and nationality, “this powerful and important debut is a story for our time” (Library Journal, starred review).

Great historical fiction

I listened to this book so I did not have a hard copy to help me when things got complex. I actually listened twice because I knew I had missed the importance of some crucial relationships. I also spent time looking at maps of east India, East Bengal, West Bengal, Bangladesh, Burma. I needed to understand the distances. (East Bengal actually is Bangladesh.) There are characters whom you meet and have no idea of their importance until much later in the book. Hence my second reading cleared some things up. The story moves constantly among the years of 1942, 1946-7, 1970 and 2004.

While this book taught me about South Asian history, during WW2, it’s also a beautiful story of the innate goodness in some people and the lack of same in others. And since I’m 81, I actually remember the horrific loss of life when “the storm” ravaged the Bay of Bengal and took millions of lives.