After Disasters

Finalist for the 2017 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Beautifully and hauntingly written, After Disasters is told through the eyes of four people in the wake of a life-shattering earthquake in India. An intricate story of love and loss weaves together the emotional and intimate narratives of Ted, a pharmaceutical salesman turned member of the Disaster Assistance Response Team; his colleague Piotr, who still carries with him the scars of the Bosnia conflict; Andy, a young firefighter eager to prove his worth; and Dev, a doctor on the ground racing against time and dwindling resources. Through time and place, hope and tragedy, love and lust, these four men put their lives at risk in a country where danger lurks everywhere. O. Henry Prize-winning author Viet Dinh takes us on a moving and evocative journey through an India set with smoky funeral pyres, winding rivers that hold prayers and the deceased, and the rubble of Gujarat, a crumbling place wavering between life and death. As the four men fight to impose order on an increasingly chaotic city, where looting and threats of violence become more severe, they realize the first lives they save might be their own.

About the Author :
Viet Dinh was born in Vietnam and grew up in Colorado. He attended Johns Hopkins University and the University of Houston and currently teaches at the University of Delaware. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Delaware Division of the Arts, as well as an O. Henry Prize. His stories have appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, Witness, Fence, Five Points, Chicago Review, the Threepenny Review, and the Greensboro Review.

Review :
An Amazon Best Book of the Month: Fiction & Literature One of Buzzfeed’s “21 Incredible New Books You Need to Read This Fall” “Shocking, engaging, and moving, this novel embraces humanity in all its messy, thrilling complexity. A strong debut from an author capable of immersing the reader in a foreign world.” —Kirkus Reviews “After Disasters is a book of immense empathy, and in many ways, a hopeful one.” —GQ, Best Book of September “[A] stunning debut…A celebration of the messiness of humanity and the beauty found within it.” —Nylon, 13 Books to Read This September “Haunting and heartbreaking, After Disasters is not an easy read by any means. But it gets to the heart of what happens when we are faced with a disaster we can’t control, and brilliantly probes into the parts of ourselves that arise in the aftermath.” —Refinery29, Best Book of September “After Disasters is a story of grit and pain, not unlike the earthquake it follows. Read it at your own peril, but once you do, the pictures it paints in your mind will linger for a long time.” —New York Journal of Books “Dinh is skilled at rendering the messiness of human motivation, and he adeptly harmonizes various preoccupations—masculinity, ecological abrasion, and the complexities of international aid work.” —The New Yorker “Make shelf space for Dinh’s stupendous debut, which is bound to appear on this year’s lists of award nominations and best-of compilations.” —Booklist (starred review) “Meticulously researched and vividly told, After Disasters is an ambitious page-turner that weaves together environmental devastation, queer masculinities, and postcolonial landscapes.” —LA Review of Books “[After Disasters] is outright beautiful, one of those rare combinations where you can’t stop reading it, so engaged are you in the characters’ lives, but equally, you force yourself to stop and sift through a sentence’s construction or reflect on how the author has so perfectly captured the ineffable.” —Lambda Literary Review “A+: After Disasters, by Viet Dinh, a heartrending account of global disaster relief (and love). This novel made me think about headlines in a new way—what really happens in the weeks and months after the earthquake, the flood, the fire. Incredible book.” —Lincoln Star Journal “Viet Dinh takes on a multitude of voices in exploring the aftermath of disaster and the ways we fight to do more than survive. A promising debut from a writer whose stories I’ve been following for years. This is one to watch.” —Matthew Salesses, The Hundred-Year Flood “After Disasters is a triumph of pulsating humanity and lyrical ambition. Viet Dinh has written a novel of tremendous range, vibrant scope, and astonishing detail—one that dares to consider the emotional dimensions of natural cataclysms, the conflicts faced by international aid relief workers, and the daily challenges of saving our own brief lives. After Disasters marks the debut of Viet Dinh’s brilliant career.” —Amber Dermont, New York Times bestselling author of The Starboard Sea “After Disasters is a wonderful read—the earthquake at the center of these stories permits the characters within them to reveal their essential selves, whether in weakness or heroism. The book has the breadth and sweep of a novel, leading the reader across time and geography, pursuing the trajectories of its protagonists with insight and empathy. Viet Dinh is a splendid writer.” —Antonya Nelson, author of Bound and Funny Once: Stories