The Unbroken Coast: A Novel
Nalini Jones
Aug 2025 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Sneha Mathan
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17 hr 16 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
A stunning debut novel set in and around a Mumbai fishing village that follows the friendship between a young girl struggling to find her place in the world, and an aging historian reckoning with his past.
On the night his granddaughter is born in America, Professor Francis Almeida rides a bicycle through his quiet Catholic neighborhood in a suburb of Mumbai. It is 1978. He has recently retired, his grown children are scattered across the globe, and for the first time in decades, he is not sure what he should do next. A few streets from his home, in the heart of a Koli fishing village, he encounters a young mother praying for her baby daughter, ill with dengue fever, at the shrine of Our Lady of Navigators. He hopes the child will live.
Nearly a decade later, Francis meets the child again. She is Celia, daughter of a fisherman who is running from a debt collector. When an accident brings their families together, both Celia and Francis find themselves with unexpected new allies.
Spanning the turbulent years when Bombay became Mumbai, at time when environmental and economic pressures are just beginning to change the fortunes of indigenous fisherfolk, The Unbroken Coast is a lyrical novel that explores memory, faith, storytelling, and the nature of home.
On the night his granddaughter is born in America, Professor Francis Almeida rides a bicycle through his quiet Catholic neighborhood in a suburb of Mumbai. It is 1978. He has recently retired, his grown children are scattered across the globe, and for the first time in decades, he is not sure what he should do next. A few streets from his home, in the heart of a Koli fishing village, he encounters a young mother praying for her baby daughter, ill with dengue fever, at the shrine of Our Lady of Navigators. He hopes the child will live.
Nearly a decade later, Francis meets the child again. She is Celia, daughter of a fisherman who is running from a debt collector. When an accident brings their families together, both Celia and Francis find themselves with unexpected new allies.
Spanning the turbulent years when Bombay became Mumbai, at time when environmental and economic pressures are just beginning to change the fortunes of indigenous fisherfolk, The Unbroken Coast is a lyrical novel that explores memory, faith, storytelling, and the nature of home.
About the author
NALINI JONES is the author of a story collection, What You Call Winter, and the recipient of an NEA fellowship, Pushcart Prize, and O. Henry Prize. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, One Story and Guernica, among others. She currently teaches in the Columbia University MFA Writing program and has previously taught writing and literature at Yale University and the Arcadia Center in Greece.
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