A ferocious superstorm strikes Minneapolis, leveling large swaths of the city in a matter of minutes. In the storm’s wake, three people forge an unlikely bond that will shape their lives for the next twenty five years: Naomi, a disillusioned lawyer by day and amateur MMA fighter by night, searching for the meaning she’s lost after migrating from Hawai‘i; Amaré, a young investment banker determined to make enough money to keep his family safe; and Raheem, a diesel mechanic struggling to keep his business afloat.

When Naomi realizes that energy companies are responsible for the climate-induced superstorm—and the many more to come, potentially dooming her island homeland—she initiates a bitter legal battle, one that culminates in her ascension to a political office in D.C. with the power to prevent future tragedies. Yet her rise puts at risk a burgeoning romance with Amaré, whose own ambitions test Naomi’s ethical limits, while Raheem’s fate as a blue-collar business owner becomes dependent on the couple’s growing power.

Following his acclaimed debut, Sharks in the Time of Saviors, Kawai Strong Washburn again turns his remarkable gift of mythic sight to the oceans and landscapes we so often overlook in the name of progress. Spanning two decades and ranging from the American Midwest to the nation’s halls of power to islands across the Pacific, The Names of the New World is a startling, energetic, and optimistic vision of how to live in this era of overwhelming change.

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“[Kawai Strong Washburn] is adept both at sweeping set pieces and the small moments that convey the texture of an individual’s life, all rendered in rich, often lovely prose. . . Human resilience in the face of climate disaster illuminates this powerful novel.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Cinematic . . . Washburn's rich world building is both beautiful and satisfying, and his fictional heroes facing real stakes and circumstances are a gift to readers. Pages flying to the very end, this not-to-be-missed novel will leave readers thinking about what’s possible in their own futures long after closing the back cover."
—Booklist, starred review

"With The Names of the New World, Kawai Strong Washburn has delivered a startling, thrilling novel that ventures bravely into our near future—replete with superstorms, rising tides, mass displacements—and emerges with a vision that feels new and inspiring. An epic account of the fight for human dignity and an intimate, unforgettable story of love, ambition, and resilience."
—Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Wayfinder

"The writing in The Names of the New World is cerebral, muscular, electric, moving us through disaster with a light touch, consistently tempered with tenderness, humor, and love, often gorgeous with poetry, and deeply insightful about what it means to be human now and moving forward, what it means to lose and to win both. This story moves, and is moving, and feels, throughout, utterly new. It is a fiercely original, relentlessly paced epic of climate catastrophe, exploring the jagged edges of American identity. It is a profound meditation and exploration of the debt the old world owes the new, told with the undeniable pulse of those left fighting in the ruins, here to name with a kind of nuclear power what it means to be alive inside the doomed and beautiful brilliance of the devastation of ends, of change, of life itself.”
—Tommy Orange, New York Times-bestselling author of Wandering Stars and There, There

One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020. Winner of the 2021 PEN/Hemingway Award and Minnesota Book Award. Named a Best or Notable Book of 2020 by the New York Times, the Guardian, the Boston Globe, Oprah Magazine, Kirkus Reviews, BBC Culture, Good Housekeeping, LitHub, Spectrum Culture, Third Place Books, and Powell's Books.

In 1995 Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, on a rare family vacation, seven-year-old Nainoa Flores falls overboard a cruise ship into the Pacific Ocean. When a shiver of sharks appears in the water, everyone fears for the worst. But instead, Noa is gingerly delivered to his mother in the jaws of a shark, marking his story as the stuff of legends.

Nainoa’s family, struggling amidst the collapse of the sugarcane industry, hails his rescue as a sign of favor from ancient Hawaiian gods—a belief that appears validated after he exhibits puzzling new abilities. But as time passes, this supposed divine favor begins to drive the family apart: Nainoa, working now as a paramedic on the streets of Portland, struggles to fathom the full measure of his expanding abilities; further north in Washington, his older brother Dean hurtles into the world of elite college athletics, obsessed with wealth and fame; while in California, risk-obsessed younger sister Kaui navigates an unforgiving academic workload in an attempt to forge her independence from the family’s legacy.

When supernatural events revisit the Flores family in Hawai’i—with tragic consequences—they are all forced to reckon with the bonds of family, the meaning of heritage, and the cost of survival.

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“With prose that can be breathy and sweaty in one paragraph before gliding softly and tenderly into the next, this passionate writer cries out for us to see Hawaii in its totality: as a place of proud ancestors and gods and spirits, but also of crumbling families and hopelessness and poverty. Of mystery and beauty at every corner.”
— The New York Times Book Review

“It’s fitting that Sharks in the Time of Saviors, the radiant debut novel by Kawai Strong Washburn, immediately grips you in its jaws, plunges you into Hawaiian waters, and finally releases you, breathless and changed...The true magic of this tale can be felt in how Washburn alchemizes Hawaiian myth and lore into a modern family epic...There’s something bewitching, too, in Washburn’s prose—the furious, lively spell of it.”
— O: The Oprah Magazine

“Mixes hardscrabble Hawaiian reality with flights of wonder and the supernatural in a way that is wholly original.”
— Vanity Fair

“Part Hawaiian mythology, part modern day reality...I was wholly unprepared for the sheer magic of this debut novel, the fierce loyalty characters have for one another and their reverence for the land. Present are the ancestors and the spirits of the island, but also the harsh realities of a changing economy and a family in crisis. Washburn’s compassion for his characters and for his native Hawaiian landscape make for a compelling story about heritage and the bonds of family.”
— Los Angeles Times

“Sharks in the Time of Saviors is the novel you never knew you were waiting for. Old myths clash with new realities, love is in a ride or die with grief, faith rubs hard against magic, and comic flips with tragic so much they meld into something new. All told with daredevil lyricism to burn. A ferocious debut.”
—MARLON JAMES, author of The Dissapearers

“Sharks in the Time of Saviors is a lush, virtuosic novel with breathless scope and lasting depth. Kawai Strong Washburn’s vision is searing, his talent explosive, his heart beating loud and proud on every page.”
—CLAIRE VAYE WATKINS, author of Yellow Pine

“Kawai Strong Washburn has written one of the finest debut novels I’ve read in years, a story about the resilience of family and resilience of home—a story at once lucid, original and transcendent. There is something of a Denis Johnson quality to Washburn’s writing, the way every sentence dances, moves in unexpected ways. Sharks in the Time of Saviors is a piece of magic.”
—OMAR EL AKKAD, author of One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This

“Washburn’s first novel is a story of Hawaii and of its strength, founded not merely in sentiment but in tangible, mystical forces rooted in history and in the very soil...Recalling Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, each character in turn narrates portions of the story, an effective technique that offers a 360-degree perspective while keeping the story’s secrets until ready to be revealed...A more than noteworthy first foray into contemporary fiction by Hawaiian native Washburn.”
—LIBRARY JOURNAL (starred review)

“By turns lyrical and gritty, a moving family story focuses on the aftermath of miracles….Striking style, memorable characters, and a believably miraculous premise add up to a beautifully crafted first novel.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS (starred review)

“The surprises are definitely earned, the language stirs admiration and the pacing is swift. The observations of the natural world are worthy of an Annie Dillard or Rachel Carson.”
—HONOLULU MAGAZINE

“A beautifully written debut novel.”
—VOGUE.COM