Rumaan Alam is the author of the novels Rich and Pretty, That Kind of Mother, and the instant New York Times bestseller Leave the World Behind. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Bookforum, and the New Republic, where he is a contributing editor. He studied writing at Oberlin College and lives in New York with his family.
"A slippery and duplicitous marvel of a novel.... Leave the World
Behind is atmospheric and prescient: Its rhythms of comedy
alternating with shock and despair mimic so much of the rhythms of
life right now. That's more than enough to make it a signature
novel for this blasted year." -- Fresh Air (NPR)"'Leave the World
Behind' is the perfect title for a book that opens with the promise
of utopia and travels as far from that dream as our worst fears
might take us. It is the rarest of books: a genuine thriller, a
brilliant distillation of our anxious age, and a work of high
literary merit that deserves a place among the classics of
dystopian literature." -- Washington Post"The best book you can
read right now . . . A perfectly-engineered thrill ride that is
also a novel of ideas, Leave the World Behind combines deft prose,
a pitiless view of consumer culture and a few truly shocking
moments. . . An exceptional read that will stay with you long after
you've sped through its final pages." -- USA Today"Leave the World
Behind is so many things--funny, sharp, insightful about modernity
and race and parenthood and home--but at its core it's a story of
our shared apocalypse; a steady look at humanity in the moment it
tumbles from a great height. I have not been this profoundly
unnerved by a science fiction novel since Ishiguro's Never Let Me
Go."
-- Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties"Leave
The World Behind is that rarest of things, a beautifully written,
emotionally resonant page-turner. Alam explores complex ideas about
privilege and fate with miraculous wit and grace." -- Jenny Offill,
author of Weather"Rumaan Alam's Leave the World Behind is the
fall's biggest novel." -- Entertainment Weekly"If there's one book
that will haunt you in 2020, it's this one....Equal parts literary
fiction and suspense, Leave the World Behind is an unsettling,
thought-provoking, and disturbing look at both the precarious state
of world affairs as well as class and race relations. In a year
when anything -- including the apocalypse -- feels possible, this
novel offers a realistic glimpse of how the world as we know it
could end, and it will leave you reeling." -- Buzzfeed"Rarely have
I encountered a book so cuttingly prescient about the current
emotional atmosphere...Alam's deployment of creepy, inexplicable
detail is masterful....In some ways, the premise feels like the
setup of any number of horror films, but Alam's writing transcends
that comparison, and the material with which he's working is
actually much more complex...This is a thrilling book--one that
will speak to readers who have felt the terror of isolation in
these recent, torturous months and one that will simultaneously, as
great books do, lift them out of it. This book is going to be, as
they say, big." -- Vogue"Perfectly paced, clever and haunting . . .
This is one of those stories that inspires a hungry turn of pages,
preceded by that desperate and lovely need to come up for air. So
easily the best thing I've read all year." -- Kiley Reid, author of
Such a Fun Age"Enthralling.... [Alam's] achievement is to see that
his genre's traditional arc, which relies on the idea of aftermath,
no longer makes sense. Today, disaster novels call for something
different, a recognition that we won't find a new normal." -- The
New Yorker"[Alam] is at the top of his game.... One of the eeriest,
most disturbing stories I've read in some time.... Alam has not
only brought his singular precision and subversive wit to his
newest novel, but also has ventured into new, unhinged territory,
where the contours of everything might be recognizable, but what's
contained within is wholly deranged." -- Refinery 29"The literary
suspense of Leave the World Behind hinges on that familiar
guilt-tinged longing for a vacation that never ends. . . . [Alam
is] gifted with an acidic wit, one he uses to break down
contemporary life at the cellular level. His wry observations about
the structured chaos of vacation life might go on indefinitely --
but then comes a knock at the door. . . . Undeniably haunting." --
New York Times Book Review"[A] propulsive thriller...the book is
both prescient and terrifying. Alam is an expert observer of the
nuances of class and wealth, and the book is full of provocative,
sensual detail, including one delicious page and a half where he
lists every single thing his protagonist buys at the grocery
store." -- Vulture"[I]mpossible to put the book down, to look
away... Sometimes it takes a gifted storyteller to make us see what
our imaginations cannot grasp. 'Leave the World Behind' tells us,
with a heart-stopping insistence, that the time to fix what's
broken is now." -- Los Angeles Times"Like Stephen King's 1980
novella The Mist, Leave the World Behind expertly illustrates the
horror of the unknown, the almost painful humanity we feel when
facing down the end and, of course, human nature under duress.
During an era of plague, racism, hatred, and division, this tale of
a vacation gone awry is terrifyingly prescient." -- Rolling
Stone"You should read this book because it makes your skin tingle,
like stepping into a deep, dark pool of present-day anxieties." --
The New Yorker"Leave the World Behind isn't only the novel of 2020,
it's so alive and intelligent and awake to the world we've built
for ourselves, and over which we falsely believe we have control,
that it feels more like one of the defining novels of our era." --
Interview"Riveting and claustrophobic, Leave the World Behind
invites us to sit with our discomfort and reflect on our own rushed
judgments, delivering a dazzling and dark examination of family,
race, class, and what matters most when the impossible becomes
possible." -- Esquire"Prepare to sleep with the lights on." --
Popsugar"In [Alam's] writing is embodied both beauty and the horror
of our daily existence. It's an incredible gift, and one he uses to
great effect throughout this novel.... Bearing witness to the range
of emotions, the panic, the uncertainty and fear and doubt on a
small scale, within this household, provides some comfort. There
are no easy answers, but in the midst of uncertainty, we have each
other to rely on." -- Boston Globe"You'll remember this book." --
Minneapolis Star Tribune"In Leave the World Behind, readers wonder
how Alam predicted our contemporary dystopian anxiety.... With lush
details that sink under your skin, this is a novel whose
confrontational impact lingers." -- New York Observer"Alam crafts a
delicious escape while also reflecting cultural issues beyond what
we're seeing in 2020.... Yes, reading a book about the world
falling apart while the literal world falls apart feels meta, but
Leave the World Behind is also a much-needed, delicious escape." --
Shondaland"I avoided Apocalypse Stories for Months. Then Leave the
World Behind Became My Greatest Comfort. . . . I read the book in
one sitting, and have thought of it every day since." -- Time"Leave
the World Behind is an interesting type of apocalypse examination
because it focuses on what happens to those removed from the
action. Rather than fully examining the ramifications of this
strange new world, it looks at the scars from the old world --
race, class -- that must be confronted in order for these
characters to survive in the new . . . . Leaving the world behind
is an illusion, just like a vacation is an illusion. Reality will
catch up, and Alam's novel examines what people do differently when
it does." -- Los Angeles Review of Books"A suspenseful tale of
race, class, and family ties during a time of crisis." -- AV
Club"Alam shows an impressive facility for getting into his
characters' heads and an enviable empathy for their moral
shortcomings, emotional limitations, and failures of imagination.
The result is a riveting novel that thrums with suspense yet
ultimately offers no easy answers--disappointing those who crave
them even as it fittingly reflects our time. Addressing race, risk,
retreat, and the ripple effects of a national emergency, Alam's
novel is just in time for this moment." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred
review)"Spectacular and ominous.... This illuminating social novel
offers piercing commentary on race, class and the luxurious mirage
of safety, adding up to an all-too-plausible apocalyptic vision. --
Publishers Weekly (starred review)"Alam brilliantly captures the
shift in dynamics between the two families, from apprehension about
each other to a collective front against an external entity. The
narrative's increasing tempo expertly dives into subtle yet
incisive intersections between class and race, since the
vacationers are white, and G. H. and Ruth are Black. Alam's novel
lobs a series of unsettling questions: How will we react to the
next nebulous horror? How will we parent? What will we define as
home?" -- Booklist (starred review)"So clever and so subtle that it
draws readers into a false sense of security and understanding....
Initially, the book seems to be about a modern marriage and family,
priorities and choices, and how one measures success in the 21st
century, and it is. But it is also much more.... Perfectly timed
for today's uncertain world." -- Library Journal"Leave the World
Behind is pitch-perfect in atmosphere, easy to read and deceptive
in the high polish of its setting. Alam has crafted a deeply
bewitching and disquieting masterpiece." -- Shelf Awareness"The
novel that looks to be the breakout hit of the fall, "Leave the
World Behind" is a deeply unnerving, gorgeously written thriller."
-- NJ.com"This is an exceptional examination of race and class and
what the world looks like when it's ending--not at all different
from the world we are in now." -- Roxane Gay, author of
Hunger"Rumaan Alam's Leave the World Behind is a canny Trojan horse
of a novel, and also a Pandora's Box. Like the family at its
center, we're seduced utterly by the bounty and insularity of its
world, only to find ourselves, inch by inch, approaching a larger
darkness lurking just beyond. With a potent Shirley Jackson energy,
it is both eerily timeless and sharply prescient at once, and
lingers long after its final page."
-- Megan Abbott, author of Give Me Your Hand"You will want to read
Leave the World Behind very quickly, you will want to read it very
slowly and savor every word. Rumaan Alam's ingenious, gorgeously
written novel feels both like a prophecy and a contemporaneous
response to our anxious era, all of it building to a perfect
finale." -- Laura Lippman, author of Lady in the Lake"Rumaan Alam's
witty, incisive take on the American privileged classes has always
been hilarious, but there's a sinister shadow behind the satire in
his latest book, as it becomes increasingly tense and unsettling.
Alam has achieved a rare feat--a comic novel that is also genuinely
terrifying." -- Dan Chaon, author of Ill WillHere in your hands,
wrapped in the delicious cloth of suspense, Leave the World Behind
begs us to ask the most important questions. How do we let the
other in? Where do we draw the borders of home? A prescient book,
built for these strange times, sure to entrance and electrify. --
Samantha Hunt, author of The Dark Dark"Alam has a tremendous talent
for bringing the complexities of family tensions to life. In the
confined space of a single home, this remarkable novel takes on
some of the hardest questions of our time about class, race, and
who we become in moments of growing uncertainty. In every eloquent
scene, Alam reveals something new about what being a family means
in the twenty-first century." -- Idra Novey, author of Those Who
Knew"This novel left me tense, overwhelmed, and bristling with
admiration. Rumaan Alam is a brilliant writer, a beautiful prose
stylist with an uncanny talent for drawing characters--both their
individual quirks and foibles, and the subtle gradations of class
and circumstance. In this novel he combines those gifts with
absolutely superb pacing and atmospheric control, balancing the
comic and the tragic, the real and the surreal, the cynical and the
empathetic, the individual and the collective. I'm blown away by
this novel." -- Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State
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