In The Light Of What We Know: A Novel
by Zia Haider Rahman
Buy on Amazon" An investment banker approaching forty, his career collapsing and his marriage unraveling, receives a surprise visitor at his West London town house. Confronting the disheveled figure of a South Asian male carrying a backpack, the banker recognizes a long-lost college friend, a mathematics prodigy who disappeared many years earlier under mysterious circumstances. The friend has resurfaced with a confession of unsettling power. Zia Haider Rahman takes us on a journey of exhilarating scope, ranging over Kabul, London, New York, Islamabad, Oxford, Princeton, and Sylhet, and dealing with love, belonging, finance, cognitive science, and war.…
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"This dazzling first novel by British-Bangladeshi author Zia Haider Rahman follows two old friends, one a child of Pakistani privilege, the other born into poverty in Bangladesh. Both work in finance and meet in London after a long separation; and both of their lives are disintegrating in different ways. As the book tells their stories, it addresses exile, love, mathematics, religion, the war in Afghanistan and the financial crash of 2008. Don’t be put off by the length of the book (more than 500 pages) or its breadth — the writing shimmers."
NPR Books We Love — 2014 · apps.npr.org