The Storm We Made

Featuring Vanessa Chan with Qian Julie Wang.
Author Vanessa Chan will discuss her new book 'The Storm We Made' with fellow author Qian Julie Wang.
In this spellbinding novel, an ordinary housewife becomes an unlikely spy-and her dark secrets will test even the most unbreakable ties.
Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantara’s family is in terrible danger: her fifteen-year-old son, Abel, has disappeared, and her youngest daughter, Jasmin, is confined in a basement to prevent being pressed into service at the comfort stations. Her eldest daughter Jujube, who works at a tea house frequented by drunk Japanese soldiers, becomes angrier by the day.
Cecily knows two things: that this is all her fault; and that her family must never learn the truth.
A decade prior, Cecily had been desperate to be more than a housewife to a low-level bureaucrat in British-colonized Malaya. A chance meeting with the charismatic General Fujiwara lured her into a life of espionage, pursuing dreams of an “Asia for Asians.” Instead, Cecily helped usher in an even more brutal occupation by the Japanese. Ten years later as the war reaches its apex, her actions have caught up with her. Now her family is on the brink of destruction-and she will do anything to save them.
Spanning years of pain and triumph, told from the perspectives of four unforgettable characters, The Storm We Made is a dazzling saga about the horrors of war; the fraught relationships between the colonized and their oppressors, and the ambiguity of right and wrong when survival is at stake.
This 7 Stories Up event was recorded live on June 13, 2024, at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (SNFL).
This program was made possible by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).