An American Mom in Asia

If I had to pick a favorite genre of book, it would be multi-generational historical fiction. I LOVE a novel about a family through several generations facing challenges, wars, disasters, joy, celebration and everyday life in a specific place…and it all tying together in the end. That’s the exact type of book I found for Bangladesh, The Storm by Arif Anwar.

This novel takes us as readers from India to Myanmar to pre-independent Bangladesh and to the USA. We travel from the 1940’s through the 2000’s. We meet a range of characters facing a World War, kidnapping, immigration, deportation and of course, a storm. Shar and Anna are the heart of this story. He is a Bangla immigrant living in Washington DC in 2004 helping raise his 6 year old daughter. I was immediately invested in his search for a permanent visa status to remain in the US to stay connected to his daughter. As we travel back in time, we meet other characters that we assume are part of Shar’s past, but it takes awhile to understand who they are and how they all connect. A terrible storm coming across the Bay of Bengal in 1970 threatens the tiny fishing village where Jamir and Honufa struggle to survive. Meanwhile in 1940’s Calcutta, Rahim and Zahira try and imagine what post colonial India will look like for them as Muslims. Should they relocate to the region of Bangla before it splits from India altogether? Tensions and stakes are high, and I was completely hooked by this novel.

⭐️ My rating: 4.5 stars of 5