After the Tsunami [Paperback]

Annam Manthiram (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 12, 2011

In Manthiram's After the Tsunami, Siddhartha, an Indian man, appears to have it all: a successful career as a schoolteacher in the United States, a perceptive wife, and a son and daughter who respect him as much as they adore him. However, Siddhartha's past haunts him as he cannot help but relive the brutal and fearful events he faced as a child in an Indian orphanage. Despite his achievement and the physical distance he has put between himself and the harrowing events of his youth, those events persist and impose themselves upon his life.

At the age of nine, Siddhartha loses his family to a tsunami and is taken in by a boys' home, run entirely by "Mothers" who are physically and emotionally abusive. Siddhartha alternates between describing the traumatic conditions of his confinement as a child and his seemingly carefree life in America. Only when his daughter, engaged to an Indian man, asks Siddhartha to return to his homeland is he driven to confront his childhood. Siddhartha knows that he must visit the orphanage one last time. He must return to the place of his youth's destruction to let go of his past or be lost in self-torture forever.

Cutting in its clarity and profoundly insightful, After the Tsunami constructs an astute landscape of friendship despite depravity, compassion amidst horror, resiliency above misfortune. This is a powerful first novel of survival and redemption. After the Tsunami will haunt and move readers everywhere.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

ANNAM MANTHIRAM is also the author of the Dysfunction: Stories, which was a Finalist in the 2010 Elixir Press Fiction Award. Annam’s work has been published in over twenty literary journals, including Cream City Review, Sierra Nevada Review,,and Monkeybicycle. A graduate of the M.A. Writing program at the University of Southern California, Ms. Manthiram resides in New Mexico.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

 

From  After the Tsunami

 

 

My friends ask me why I do not eat fish. I tell them that it is difficult to consume something that once had eyes as big as mine. They laugh, and the joke moves the conversation forward and away.

            Sometimes they push and want to know where I come from, why my nose is bent, if I have nightmares. When I think of my past, I imagine a bloody circle. The present is a labyrinth with stretches of promise and an underbelly of sickness. Reconciliation seems at times impossible. 

The ones I lost emerge in dreams; my wife calls them terrors. Years cannot erase my memory of them. Their spirits continue to draw me to that place over and over and over again because therein lies salvation. For whom? I ask, but they do not say. Instead, they compel me to recall their lives, so as to give meaning to their existence. I need to remember; I need them to come back to me. 

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Stephen F. Austin University Press (October 12, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1936205432
• ISBN-13: 978-1936205431
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.8 x 6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,856,255 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Annam Manthiram is the author of the novel After the Tsunami (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2011) and a short story collection (Dysfunction: Stories), which was a Finalist in the 2010 Elixir Press Fiction Award and received Honorable Mention in Leapfrog Press' 2010 Fiction Contest.

Annam's short work has been published in over twenty literary journals, including Poets & Writers Magazine, Cream City Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Pank, Smokelong Quarterly, Monkeybicycle, and others. She also volunteers as a Copy Editor for Grey Sparrow Journal, the recipient of the 2011 Council of Editors of Learned Journals' (CELJ) Best New Journal Award. A graduate of the M.A. Writing program at the University of Southern California, Ms. Manthiram resides in New Mexico with her husband, Alex, and son, Sathya.

You can visit her online at AnnamManthiram.com.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Wasn't prepared to love this so much! April 6, 2012

By S. Herrin

Format:Paperback

I didn't think this subject matter would appeal to me, but I was instantly drawn into the book by the author's remarkable storytelling ability. There are so many lovely and terrible things woven together into this story of one life. In the end, I really liked being left to draw my own line between the main character as a child and the main character as a man and I find that I am still quietly rooting for him, although I've finished the book.

5.0 out of 5 stars An unforgettable story, beautifully rendered March 28, 2012

By Cynthia G. Brown

Format:Paperback

"After the Tsunami" should be a difficult book to read. Instead, it's a difficult book to put down. Set in the bleak world of an Indian orphanage, the book portrays the cruelties and vagaries of world mercifully foreign to most of us. But the book also conveys a message of hope. From the outset, we know that one of the orphans has escaped this world, and we follow his story back and forth in time, wanting to know how he survived. The author has created a character that you are willing--eager even--to follow. It's this deft touch (and the beautiful writing) that draws us into a world that, in the hands of a lesser talent, would be too harsh for many readers. You won't soon forget this book. Highly recommended.

5.0 out of 5 stars draws you in... March 17, 2012

By Preeti P

Format:Paperback

`After the Tsunami' was a hard book to read. I had to stop every few pages and walk around to clear the images from my head. It fills me with despair when I read books where children are victims of adults. A book like this makes me face up to how we fail in our lives as good human beings, how we exploit, cheat and ruin other lives, and justify to ourselves that we are doing it for the good of the other.

The writing is stark and straightforward - a laying down of facts about the horrors of human depravity. I think this is the only way a story like this can be told.

I wanted to know more about the end of the orphanage, more about how Siddhartha came to America, more about his own children. He was a survivor - he knew nothing about raising children, he only knew about surviving among them - so I wanted to know how he managed to 'survive' among his own children.

I look forward to future books by this author.