Book Review: The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende
Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht – the night their family loses everything. As her child’s safety seems ever harder to guarantee, Samuel’s mother secures a spot for him on the last Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin.
Arizona, 2019. Eight decades later, Anita Diaz and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador and seeking refuge in the United States. But their arrival coincides with the new family separation policy, and seven-year-old Anita finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. She escapes her tenuous reality through her trips to Azabahar, a magical world of the imagination. Meanwhile, Selena Duran, a young social worker, enlists the help of a successful lawyer in hopes of tracking down Anita’s mother.
Intertwining past and present, The Wind Knows My Name tells the tale of these two unforgettable characters, both in search of family and home. It is both a testament to the sacrifices that parents make, and a love letter to the children who survive the most unfathomable dangers – and never stop dreaming.
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Released June 2023
My Thoughts:This is a novel about refugees and the act of seeking refuge within another country, but in true Allende style, it tells this story sweeping from Vienna at the beginning of the Holocaust through to America in the Trump era, via a collection of characters who seemingly are unconnected. The point at which you begin to see their connections is where the Allende magic sets in, the way in which she can weave a story over so many decades and continents and then draw it all together with such perfection. The Wind Knows my name is very much a love story, but not of the romantic sort, of the human connection variety.
The story set in the present day is political in every way. Allende is at that point in her career where I’d say she can pretty much write whatever she likes with no fear of backlash, and she wields this literary power with precision. The story of Anita is but one example of a harsh reality for refugee children and their terrified families. America is not the only country that is guilty of separating children from their parents and detaining them indefinitely. Allende tells this aspect of the story with an honest lens that was brutally affecting.
As always, the writing is beautiful. I find Allende incomparable to any other author. I am incapable of being objective when reviewing her novels – I’ve said this, I think, in every review I’ve ever written on her work. Each new release offers a journey and I never really know where I’m going to end up, but I am always sure that I’ll be swept away and dazzled.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
