The Wind Knows My Name: A Novel

Isabel Allende

Jun 2023 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Edoardo Ballerini and Maria Liatis

About this audiobook

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “The lives of a Jewish boy escaping Nazi-occupied Europe and a mother and daughter fleeing twenty-first-century El Salvador intersect in this ambitious, intricate novel about war and immigration” (People), from the author of A Long Petal of the Sea and Violeta

“Timely, provocative . . . emotionally satisfying . . . [a story about] the kindness of strangers who become family.”—The New York Times Book Review

AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht—the night his family loses everything. As her child’s safety becomes ever harder to guarantee, Samuel’s mother secures a spot for him on a 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 Díaz 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 Durán, 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.

Ratings and reviews

I'm hours into the audiobook, and so far it is nothing less than moment after moment of abject misery for multiple seemingly disjointed characters in unrelated times and places. The only thing that relates them to one another is experiencing the worst moments humanity can possibly fathom, from kristalnacht straight into burning villages and bayoneted children in El Salvador, and then suddenly and without explanation we move on to blind orphans in cages being detained by the real monsters in today's US government. Not a single respite, smile, or human kindness breaks up the torture of this story. If you want to feel awful for hours without stopping, go for it. It's a really terrible experience.

About the author

Born in Peru and raised in Chile, Isabel Allende is the author of a number of bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including Violeta, A Long Petal of the Sea, The House of the Spirits, Of Love and Shadows, Eva Luna, and Paula. Her books have been translated into more than forty-two languages and have sold more than seventy-four million copies worldwide. She lives in California.