Is there an audiobook of Sharks in the Time of Saviors?

Yes. Sharks in the Time of Saviors has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Jolene Kim, Kaleo Griffith, G. K. Bowes, and Tui Asau.

How long is the Sharks in the Time of Saviors audiobook?

The Sharks in the Time of Saviors audiobook runs 10 hr 38 min.

Is Sharks in the Time of Saviors on Kindle Unlimited?

No. Sharks in the Time of Saviors was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on August 1, 2026.

Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn book cover for the Book of the Day literary fiction book review

Our score

4.3/ 5

Excellent

Listen to Sharks in the Time of Saviors free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

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EDITION PUBLISHEDMarch 2020

PublisherCanongate Books

Genres

Fiction Literary Fiction Magical Realism

Themes

Faith and the cost of being someone else's miracleFamily bonds versus individual escapeHeritage, dispossession, and Hawaiian identityClass and the pressure of making good

Sharks in the Time of Saviors

Name: Sharks in the Time of Saviors
Price: 11.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Kawai Strong Washburn

Kawai Strong Washburn

Kawai Strong Washburn's Sharks in the Time of Saviors is a Hawaiian family saga where ancient gods press up against a present of foreclosure, scholarship debt, and exile to the mainland. A boy plucked alive from a shiver of sharks becomes both the family's miracle and its slow undoing. Magical realism rooted in work, money, and place.

The Review

Our take

What hooks you first is the chorus. Washburn hands the story to the Flores family in rotating first-person voices, and each one arrives with its own grain and music. The mother speaks with a kind of devotional ache. Dean, the older brother, talks in the swagger and grievance of an athlete chasing a way out. Kaui, the sharp youngest, narrates with brittle wit and a wariness toward faith. And Noa, the one delivered from the water, carries the heaviest silence. The book lives in those shifts. You feel the way a single event refracts differently depending on who's holding the lens, and how a family can love each other fiercely while telling completely incompatible stories about what happened to them.

The premise sounds like fable, and the opening rescue is staged with genuine wonder, but Washburn is far more interested in the bill that comes due. This is a novel about what it costs to be the vessel of other people's hope. Noa develops abilities and ends up working as a paramedic in Portland, yet the gift never feels like a triumph. It feels like a weight he can't set down and can't fully control, while the family back home keeps reaching toward it like a lifeline they're not sure they've earned. The collapse of the sugarcane economy hums underneath everything. These are people squeezed out of the islands they belong to, and the gods, when they appear, feel bound up with that loss rather than offering any clean rescue from it.

The prose runs hot and physical. Washburn writes the body, the ocean, the mud and sweat of labor, with a wild energy that occasionally tips into excess but mostly earns its risks. When the writing reaches for the mythic, it does so from the dirt up, never floating off into pretty abstraction. The chapters that follow Dean's pursuit of athletic glory and Kaui's grind in a demanding mainland program carry a real ache: the loneliness of being the kid sent off to make good on everyone's sacrifice, watching the family debt follow you across an ocean.

The back half deepens into grief and reckoning, and the way the siblings circle back toward each other and toward Hawaii gives the book its emotional charge. This is a story about heritage as both inheritance and burden, about whether faith can survive its own disappointments, and about what a family owes the one it decided to worship. Washburn doesn't resolve those questions tidily, and that's where some readers will part ways with him. A meaningful minority find the final stretch unsatisfying, the answers withheld where they wanted landing.

Why you should read

Readers who loved Tommy Orange's There There or other multi-voice, multigenerational debuts
Fans of magical realism grounded in real economics and place
Anyone drawn to coming-of-age stories about siblings, class, and the pressure of being 'the one'
Readers who want Hawaiian setting and mythology treated with weight, not postcard exotica

What to expect

Readers who want their magical realism to deliver clear answers may find the supernatural threads deliberately unresolved, and a fair number of readers feel the ending withholds too much
The rotating viewpoints and ambitious, sometimes overflowing prose ask for patience; if you prefer a single steady narrator and a tight plotline, the structure can feel diffuse

If you love voice-driven literary fiction that braids the supernatural into something grounded and material, the comparisons to There There and to other multi-voice debuts hold up. It's an uneven book in places, but the ambition and the feeling carry it.

Reviewed by Avery · How our reviews are written

Our verdict

4.3/ 5

Excellent

Listen to Sharks in the Time of Saviors free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Buy on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Prices may vary.

Where to read or listen

Is there an audiobook of Sharks in the Time of Saviors?: Yes. Sharks in the Time of Saviors has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Jolene Kim, Kaleo Griffith, G. K. Bowes, and Tui Asau.
Listen to Sharks in the Time of Saviors free with an Audible trial
We earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.
How long is the Sharks in the Time of Saviors audiobook?: The Sharks in the Time of Saviors audiobook runs 10 hr 38 min.
Is Sharks in the Time of Saviors on Kindle Unlimited?: No. Sharks in the Time of Saviors was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on August 1, 2026.
How much does Sharks in the Time of Saviors cost?: On Amazon: Kindle $11.99, Paperback $10.44, Hardcover $14.05. Prices as of August 27, 2026 at 3:45 AM EDT and may change.

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Common questions

What is Sharks in the Time of Saviors about?: What hooks you first is the chorus. Washburn hands the story to the Flores family in rotating first-person voices, and each one arrives with its own grain and music. The mother speaks with a kind of devotional ache. Dean, the older brother, talks in the swagger and grievance of an athlete chasing…
Is Sharks in the Time of Saviors worth reading?: We scored Sharks in the Time of Saviors 4.3 out of 5. Kawai Strong Washburn's Sharks in the Time of Saviors is a Hawaiian family saga where ancient gods press up against a present of foreclosure, scholarship debt, and exile to the mainland. A boy plucked alive from a shiver of sharks becomes both the family's miracle and its slow…