In the Light of What We Know: Zia Haider Rahman - Softcover

Haider Rahman, Zia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1447231236 ISBN 13: 9781447231233

Publisher: Picador, 2015

Synopsis

WINNER: JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE 2015
SHORTLISTED: GOLDSMITHS PRIZE and SPECSAVERS NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS 2014
LONGLISTED: GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD and ORWELL PRIZE FOR FICTION 2014

‘It’s hard not to write in superlatives of this extraordinary novel.' Guardian

One September morning in 2008, an investment banker approaching forty, his career in collapse and his marriage unravelling, receives a surprise visitor at his West London home. He struggles to place the dishevelled figure carrying a backpack, until he recognizes a friend from his student days, a brilliant man who disappeared years earlier under mysterious circumstances. The friend has resurfaced to make a confession of unsettling power.

Theirs is the age-old story of the bond between two men and the betrayal of one by the other. As the friends begin to talk, and as their room becomes a world, a journey begins that is by turns exhilarating, shocking, intimate and strange. Set against the breaking of nations and beneath the clouds of economic crisis, and moving between Kabul, New York, Oxford, London and Islamabad, In the Light of What We Know tells the story of people wrestling with unshakeable legacies of class and culture, and pushes at the great questions of love, origins, science, faith and war.

In an extraordinary feat of imagination, Zia Haider Rahman has woven the seismic upheavals of our young century into a novel of rare compassion, scope, and courage.

About this title

About the Author

Born in rural Bangladesh, Zia Haider Rahman was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and at Cambridge, Munich, and Yale Universities. He has worked as an investment banker on Wall Street and as an international human-rights lawyer. In the Light of What We Know is his first novel.

From the Back Cover

'The big read with the big answers. A dizzying voyage that touches on many of the key issues of our time' Sunday Times

Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2014
Shortlisted for the Specsavers National Book Awards 2014
Longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 2014

Early one September morning in 2008, a man arrives, unannounced and agitated, at the home of an old friend. The friend takes a minute to place him: they have not seen each other since Zafar disappeared suddenly some years before.

Zafar has returned to make a confession of unsettling power.

Told in the quiet of a London house, in a conversation as epic as it is intimate, his story is, in many ways, the story of our century.

'An extraordinary meditation on the limits and uses of human knowledge, a heart-breaking love story and a gripping account of one man's psychological disintegration' Observer

'Utterly absorbing' Guardian

'A brilliant novel' New York Times

From the Inside Flap

One September morning in 2008, an investment banker approaching forty, his career in collapse and his marriage unravelling, receives a surprise visitor at his West London home. He struggles to place the dishevelled figure carrying a backpack, until he recognizes a friend from his student days, a brilliant man who disappeared years earlier under mysterious circumstances. The friend has resurfaced to make a confession of unsettling power.

Theirs is the age-old story of the bond between two men and the betrayal of one by the other. As the friends begin to talk, and as their room becomes a world, a journey begins that is by turns exhilarating, shocking, intimate and strange. Set against the breaking of nations and beneath the clouds of economic crisis, and moving between Kabul, New York, Oxford, London and Islamabad, In the Light of What We Know tells the story of people wrestling with unshakeable legacies of class and culture, and pushes at the great questions of love, origins, science, faith and war.

In an extraordinary feat of imagination, Zia Haider Rahman has woven the seismic upheavals of our young century into a novel of rare compassion, scope, and courage.

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1447231236
• ISBN 13: 9781447231233
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 576