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In the Light of What We Know

In the Light of What We Know is the first novel by Zia Haider Rahman. First published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, it was released in the spring of 2014 to international critical acclaim and earned Rahman the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Britain's oldest literary prize, previous winners of which include Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, J. M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie and Cormac McCarthy.[1] The novel has been translated into many languages, including Czech, Greek and Arabic.

In the Light of What We Know
AuthorZia Haider Rahman
LanguageEnglish
PublisherFarrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date
2014
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages512
ISBN0374175624
In the Light of What We Know
AuthorZia Haider Rahman
LanguageEnglish
PublisherPicador
Publication date
2014
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages576
ISBN978-1447231233

Outline

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Much of the novel is set during the war in Afghanistan at the beginning of the century and the financial crisis of 2007–08. One September morning in 2008, an investment banker approaching forty, his career in collapse and his marriage unraveling, receives a surprise visitor at his townhouse in South Kensington. In the disheveled figure of a South Asian male carrying a backpack, the banker recognizes a long-lost friend, a mathematics prodigy who disappeared years earlier under mysterious circumstances. The friend has resurfaced to make a confession of unsettling power.

The story ranges from Kabul to London, New York City, Islamabad, Dhaka, Oxford, and Princeton, NJ—and explores the questions of love, belonging, science, and war. At its heart is the friendship of two men and the betrayal of one by the other.[2][3] Rahman has described the backbone of the novel as an exploration of how much we can rely on what we think we know?[4] Reviewers have said that "the book challenges any attempt at summary."[5]

Critical reception

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Writing in The New York Review of Books, the novelist and critic Joyce Carol Oates described the novel as "remarkable…an adventure story of sorts, echoing not only the canonical Heart of Darkness but F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, the novels of dislocation and inquiry of Graham Greene and W.G. Sebald, and…the spy novels of John le Carré…and a novel of ideas, a compendium of epiphanies, paradoxes, and riddles clearly designed to be read slowly and meditatively; one is moved to think of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain…this powerful debut…is a unique work of fiction bearing witness to much that is unspeakable in human relationships as in international relations."[6] In a "Books of the Year" feature in The Times Literary Supplement, Oates further wrote that "among outstanding novels is the impressive debut of Zia Haider Rahman, the meditative, mysterious, decidedly non-page-turner In the Light of What We Know, a postcolonial novel writ large. The meticulous interweaving of Rahman's fiction necessitates reading both forward and back, and makes us realize: who cares about "page-turners" when the true pleasure of a work of fiction is its gravitational pull upon us?"[7]

In a 4,000-word review for The New Yorker, the critic James Wood described Rahman as "a deep and subtle storyteller" and praised the novel as "astonishingly achieved… Isn't this kind of thinking — worldly and personal, abstract and concrete, essayistic and dramatic — exactly what the novel is for? How it justifies itself as a form?… In the Light of What We Know is what Salman Rushdie once called an 'everything novel.' It is wide-armed, hospitable, disputatious, worldly, cerebral. Ideas and provocations abound on every page."[8]

The Australian literary critic Louise Adler, reviewing the novel for The Sydney Morning Herald, wrote, "My faith in fiction has been restored… Rahman writes brilliantly and hilariously about British class-consciousness… a satisfyingly and richly argumentative novel… In the Light of What We Know is my international book of 2014. It is a novel that makes sense of the past decade, its geopolitical tensions and the way we as hapless individuals experience those complexities."[9]

The novel received wide critical acclaim internationally. Alex Preston in The Observer called it "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. This is the novel I'd hoped Jonathan Franzen's Freedom would be (but wasn't) — an exploration of the post-9/11 world that is both personal and political, epic and intensely moving".[10] "[T]ackles the big questions…with supreme narrative skill… a masterpiece," wrote Kevin Power in the Irish Sunday Business Post; Amitava Kumar in The New York Times called it "strange and brilliant".[11] "[A] great work…one of the most extraordinary novels I have ever read", said Madeleine Thien in the New Canadian Media; "unsettling and profound…utterly absorbing", said The Guardian;[12] Maggie Fergusson in Intelligent Life called it "astonishing… an intellectual banquet...The ingredients range from philosophy, religion and mathematics to international aid, high finance and carpentry. But the question at its heart is simple: how does knowledge relate to wisdom, happiness and truth? And the story, which ranges from Islamabad to Wall Street and from 9/11 to 2008, is gripping".[13] The Sunday Times called it "an extraordinary achievement". Mint/Wall Street Journal said it was "the finest book written by an Indian subcontinent-origin author".[14] "[A] ground-breaking work of staggering genius", said Open magazine.[15] The Times Literary Supplement called it "among many other things, a beautiful, anguished tirade against narrowness and complacency".[16] Dawn called it "a semantic and linguistic Wonderland".[17] "A virtuoso debut".[18] and "gorgeously written" said Vogue.[19] The Daily Beast wrote of "sentences ramifying and unraveling to bring in more and more ideas… in a way that few still alive can command."[20] On the Dutch television show, De Wereld Draait Door, a panel of critics unanimously praised the book, saying "This is the Great American Novel," "Rahman is one of the great writers of our time" and "This book proves that the novel is not dead but vital and flourishing."[21] "A great and powerful novel," wrote Florence Noiville for Le Monde.[22] In a review for Libération, the broadcaster Kathleen Evin called it "a magnificent book".[23] Les Inrockuptibles described it as "the total novel of our contemporary crises. To plunge into this text, full of digressions yet beautifully maintained, is to embark on a journey through time, space, and inside yourself."[24]

Criticisms of In the Light of What We Know include Hannah Harris Green, writing in The Los Angeles Review of Books in a review titled "What Female Characters?" that, while "Rahman has a brilliant mind, capable of understanding many kinds of people. I hope one day he endeavors to try and understand women. Otherwise, for all his uniqueness, he will be yet another respected male author who would rather speak for women than to them."[25]

"In the Light of What We Know appeared in several lists of best books for 2014, including in The Observer,[26] The Times Literary Supplement, Slate,[27] Kirkus Reviews, NPR,[28] The Daily Telegraph,[29] The Atlantic, Barnes and Noble Review and The New Yorker. Selecting it as one of three great novels she read in 2014, the critic Wendy Lesser wrote that the novel reminded her of Joseph Conrad because of "the layers of narrators (there are two) and the contemplative weave of politics and fiction…The characters' complicated lives, which are at the foreground of the book, persuasively justify everything."[30] Philip French described it as "dazzling… what Henry James called a 'large, loose, baggy monster' — but for our century."[31] Rebecca Mead of The New Yorker wrote that the novel was "talky and intellectual, while also unfolding a riveting drama: a deeply satisfying book,"[32] and that it was "a 21st-century novel written with the ambition of scope of a 19th-century novel, and bearing the seriousness of purpose of a 20th-century one."[33]

In the Light of What We Know earned Rahman the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Britain's oldest literary prize.[34] It was long-listed for the Orwell Prize 2015,[35] the Guardian First Book award 2014,[36] the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award 2015,[37] shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2014[38] and nominated for the Folio Prize 2015.[39] Rahman was shortlisted for the New Writer of the Year award at the UK National Book Awards 2014.[40] The novel won the inaugural International Ranald McDonald Prize 2016.[41]

References

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  1. ^ Flood, Alison. "James Tait Black prize goes to Zia Haider Rahman's debut novel". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 August 2015.
  2. ^ Retrieved 27 December 2014.
  3. ^ Retrieved 27 December 2014.
  4. ^ Jonathan Lee (23 October 2014). "How Do You Know?". Guernica.
  5. ^ (11 April 2014), "The Banker, the Visitor, His Wife and Her Lover", The New York Times. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
  6. ^ Oates, Joyce Carol (23 October 2014), "Witness to the Unknowable", The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
  7. ^ Oates, Joyce Carol (26 November 2014), "Books of the Year", The Times Literary Supplement. Retrieved 23 December 2014.
  8. ^ Wood, James (19 May 2014), "The World As We Know It: Zia Haider Rahman's dazzling début", The New Yorker. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
  9. ^ Adler, Louise (5 September 2014), "Book Review: In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman", Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
  10. ^ Preston, Alex (23 October 2014), "Zia Haider Rahman's 'epic and intensely moving' debut", The Observer. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
  11. ^ Kumar, Amitava (11 April 2014), "The Banker, the Visitor, His Wife and Her Lover", The New York Times. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
  12. ^ Clark, Alex (11 May 2014), "In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman – review", The Guardian. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
  13. ^ Fergusson, Maggie (July/August 2014), "Six Good Books" Archived 26 December 2014 at the Wayback Machine, Intelligent Life. Retrieved 23 December 2014.
  14. ^ Deb, Sandipan (4 August 2014), "Love, Reality, Truth and Gödel", Mint/Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
  15. ^ Prasannarajan, S (13 June 2014), "A Groundbreaking Work of Staggering Genius", Open. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
  16. ^ Gordon, Edmund (2 July 2014), "The Customs of His Tribe", The Times Literary Supplement. Retrieved 23 December 2014.
  17. ^ Chishty-Mujahid, Nadya (13 July 2014), "Cover Story: In the Light of What We Know", Dawn. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
  18. ^ O'Grady, Megan (27 May 2014), "The Best Books to Read This Summer", Vogue. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
  19. ^ O'Grady, Megan (23 July 2014), "Four American Authors Make the Booker List", Vogue. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
  20. ^ Mancusi, Nicholas (28 April 2014), "The Shadow of History", The Daily Beast. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
  21. ^ DWDD Boek van de maand April 2015.
  22. ^ Noiville, Florence (19 July 2016), "Zia Haider Rahman à l’intersection des parallèles" Le Monde
  23. ^ Even, Kathleen (1 July 2016), "A LA LUMIÈRE DE CE QUE NOUS TRAVERSONS", Libération
  24. ^ Tanette, Sylvie (5 April 2016), "A la lumière de ce que nous savons de Zia Haider Rahman, le roman total de nos crises contemporaines", ‘’Les Inrockuptibles’’
  25. ^ Harris Green, Hanna (9 September 2014). "What Female Characters?". Los Angeles Review of Books.
  26. ^ (1 December 2014), "Writers Pick the Best Books of 2014", The Observer. Retrieved oDecember 21, 2014.
  27. ^ (30 November 2014), "Best Books 2014: Slate Staff Picks"[permanent dead link‍], Slate. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
  28. ^ (3 December 2014), "Great Reads 2014", NPR. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
  29. ^ (30 November 2014), "Christmas books 2014: Best books to read", The Daily Telegraph. Retrieve 21 December 2014.
  30. ^ (17 December 2014), "Six Books We Missed This Year", The Atlantic. Retrieved 23 December 2014.
  31. ^ (1 December 2014), "Writers pick the best books of 2014", Guardian. Retrieved 23 December 2014.
  32. ^ Mead, Rebecca (23 December 2014), "Best Books 2014", The New Yorker. Retrieved 23 December 2014.
  33. ^ Mead, Rebecca (10 December 2014), "Best Things They Read 2014", Barnes and Noble Review. Retrieved 23 December 2014.
  34. ^ "James Tait Black prize goes to Zia Haider Rahman's debut novel", The Guardian, 17 August 2015.
  35. ^ Prize 2015[permanent dead link‍]. 25 March 2015, Orwell Prize
  36. ^ "Guardian first book award 2014", The Guardian, 8 August 2014. Retrieved 2014-12-14.
  37. ^ Authors' Club Best First Novel Award. 25 April 2015.
  38. ^ About the shortlist 2 October 2014 "Goldsmiths". Retrieved 14 December 2014.
  39. ^ "Folio Prize Reveals 80 Titles", Guardian 14 December 2014. Retrieved 2014-12-14
  40. ^ "Specsavers National Book Awards". 31 October 2014. Archived from the original on 18 November 2014. Retrieved 14 December 2014.
  41. ^ "Hollands Dieps congratulates Zia Haider Rahman", 18 September 2016.
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