‘Storm’ eyes Bangladesh history

“The Storm: a Novel” Books), by Arif Anwar

Arif Anwar’s debut novel, “The Storm,” arrives just in time for the Atlantic hurricane season with a subtle, circular tale about the individual effects of poor disaster planning and even poorer governmental response.

The novel’s inspiration was the 1970 Bhola cyclone, which struck what is now Bangladesh and killed up to half a million people, primarily because of storm-surge flooding.

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. (Atria 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 Storm” ends up as a richly realized, instructive tale about what to do with people set adrift.