Dine & Discuss "What Storm, What Thunder"

Dine & Discuss "What Storm, What Thunder"

This event will feature a discussion led by Dr. Cécile Accilen over authentic Haitian food, on the 2024 One Maryland, One Book selection:What Storm, What Thunder by Myriam J.A. Chancy.

Space at this event is limited, please make sure to RSVP by Friday October 18th

Synopsis of What Storm, What Thunder by Myriam J. A. Chancy:

At the end of a long, sweltering day, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster—Richard, an expat and wealthy water-bottling executive with a secret daughter; the daughter, Anne, an architect who drafts affordable housing structures for a global NGO; a small-time drug trafficker, Leopold, who pines for a beautiful call girl; Sonia and her business partner, Dieudonné, who are followed by a man they believe is the vodou spirit of death; Didier, an emigrant musician who drives a taxi in Boston; Sara, a mother haunted by the ghosts of her children in an IDP camp; her husband, Olivier, an accountant forced to abandon the wife he loves; their son, Jonas, who haunts them both; and Ma Lou, the old woman selling produce in the market who remembers them all.

Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and—at the same time—an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit.

About the Author:

Myriam J. A. Chancy’s What Storm, What Thunder was named a best book of the year by NPR, Kirkus, Library Journal, the Boston Globe, and The Globe and Mail and was awarded the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Her other novels include, Village Weavers (Tin House 2024), The Loneliness of Angels, winner of the Guyana Prize Caribbean Fiction Award 2011, The Scorpion’s Claw, and Spirit of Haiti. She is a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and HBA Chair in the Humanities at Scripps College.

One Maryland One Book is a program of Maryland Humanities presented in partnership with Howard County Library System, and is sponsored by The Institute of Museum and Library Services via the Maryland State Library Agency.

Host or Publisher The School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Maryland.