The Wind Knows My Name: A multi-narrative novel that transcends time and place

? UNDER THE LAMPLIGHT-

Isabel Allende’s The Wind Knows My Name : What do two children, one living under the Nazis in 1938 Austria and another escaping a brutal massacre in a small village in El Salvador in 2019, have in common? Perhaps not the same political circumstances, but certainly a similar sense of trauma, displacement, and sorrow. The historical fiction follows primarily the story of two children — Samuel and Anita Díaz — who grow up in more than challenging conditions: Separated from their parents at the hands of oppressive forces that have no consideration for the value of human life, the children both make it to the US as refugees. Although their childhoods are several decades apart, their stories are closer to one another than one might think — especially as they both come to experience human empathy through the vindicating kindness of strangers.