by Viet Dinh
First published 2016
Ted left his pharmaceutical sales job to join the Disaster Assistance Response Team, but nothing prepared him for Gujarat after the earthquake. The Indian state lies in ruins, its cities reduced to rubble and bodies. Ted works alongside Piotr, a colleague still marked by his experiences in the Bosnia conflict, Andy, a young firefighter desperate to prove himself, and Dev, a local doctor racing against time as medical supplies run low. The four men navigate a landscape of funeral pyres and rivers carrying prayers for the dead. Looters roam the broken streets while violence threatens to erupt at any moment. Each man came to save lives, but the collapsing city forces them to confront their own survival. As order dissolves around them and danger closes in, they discover that rescuing others might mean first saving themselves. The earthquake shattered more than buildings. It exposed what happens when ordinary people face extraordinary destruction.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, contemporary
Vibes: emotional, fast-paced, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, survival
Setting: Gujarat, India
Period: 21st-century
282 pages · Paperback · Little A
Content warnings: death, graphic-violence