The Names of the New World
A Novel
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The Names of the New World
Pre-order Now for £14.37
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Narrated by:
"An epic account of the fight for human dignity and an intimate, unforgettable story of love, ambition, and resilience." —Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Wayfinder
The highly anticipated second novel from the award-winning author Kawai Strong Washburn: an extraordinary saga of resilience and ambition in the face of a chaotic world.
A ferocious superstorm strikes Minneapolis, obliterating large swaths of the city in a matter of minutes. In the storm’s wake, three people forge an unlikely bond that will shape their lives for the next twenty-five years: Naomi, a lawyer by day and an amateur MMA fighter by night, is a Pacific Islander transplanted to the Midwest for her less-than-satisfying career; Amaré, an up-by-the-bootstraps investment banker, has grand designs for all the money he’s about to make; and Raheem is a diesel mechanic, nearly paralyzed by the storm and struggling to save his business.
When Naomi recognizes that energy companies are responsible for the climate-induced superstorm—and the many more to come, potentially dooming her island homeland—she initiates a bitter legal battle, one that culminates in her appointment to a powerful political office in DC with the potential to prevent future tragedies. Yet her rise risks a burgeoning romance with Amaré, whose own ambitions test Naomi’s ethical limits, while Raheem’s fate as a blue-collar business owner becomes dependent on the couple’s growing power.
Following his much-loved debut, Sharks in the Time of Saviors, Kawai Strong Washburn turns his remarkable gift of mythic sight to the oceans and landscapes we so often overlook in the name of progress. Ranging from the American Midwest to the nation’s halls of power, to islands across the Pacific, The Names of the New World is a startling, energetic, and optimistic vision of how we’ll live in this era of overwhelming change.
Critic reviews
"With The Names of the New World, Kawai Strong Washburn has delivered a startling, thrilling novel that ventures bravely into our near future—replete with superstorms, rising tides, mass displacements—and emerges with a vision that feels new and inspiring. An epic account of the fight for human dignity and an intimate, unforgettable story of love, ambition, and resilience."
—Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Wayfinder
"The writing in The Names of the New World is cerebral, muscular, electric, moving us through disaster with a light touch, consistently tempered with tenderness, humor, and love, often gorgeous with poetry, and deeply insightful about what it means to be human now and moving forward, what it means to lose and to win both. This story moves, and is moving, and feels, throughout, utterly new. It is a fiercely original, relentlessly paced epic of climate catastrophe, exploring the jagged edges of American identity. It is a profound meditation and exploration of the debt the old world owes the new, told with the undeniable pulse of those left fighting in the ruins, here to name with a kind of nuclear power what it means to be alive inside the doomed and beautiful brilliance of the devastation of ends, of change, of life itself.”
—Tommy Orange, New York Times-bestselling author of Wandering Stars and There, There
"The Names of the New World follows three strangers bonded as kin by a storm, tracing their entwined lives across decades of environmental devastation. You cannot help but fall in love with Washburn’s flawed and resolute protagonists as they march themselves, hearts open and fists swinging, into battles they know they cannot win. A tender look at what is maimed and spared when the physical world collapses around us, this book is a testament to the enduring worth of our fragile human bonds."
—Tessa Hulls, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Feeding Ghosts
"A luminous and large-hearted exploration of the dyad between person and planet, the ways we
both degrade and illumine each other. Extraordinary."
—Tochi Onyebuchi, author of Riot Baby and Goliath
"A beautifully-written, deeply felt novel. Washburn breathes life into every page and depth into every character. A wonderful achievement!"
—Jason Mott, National Book Award-winning author of Hell of a Book