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SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2020
NOW A MAJOR GLOBAL NETFLIX ADAPTATION STARRING JULIA ROBERTS, KEVIN BACON, ETHAN HAWKE AND MAHERSHALA ALI
A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong
Amanda and Clay head to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a holiday: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they've rented for the week. But with a late-night knock on the door, the spell is broken. Ruth and G. H., an older couple who claim to own the home, have arrived there in a panic. These strangers say that a sudden power outage has swept the city, and - with nowhere else to turn - they have come to the country in search of shelter.
But with the TV and internet down, and no phone service, the facts are unknowable. Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple - and vice versa? What has happened back in New York? Is the holiday home, isolated from civilisation, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one another?
An impossibly compelling literary thriller about the world we live in now, Rumaan Alam's novel is keenly attuned to the complexities of parenthood, race and class. Leave the World Behind explores how our closest bonds are reshaped in moments of crisis - and how the most terrifying situations are never far from reality.
Author: Rumaan Alam
Paperback Published 28 November 2023 256 pages
Originally published in trade paperback 20 October 2020
'An exceptional examination of race and class and what the world looks like when it's ending.'-Roxane Gay
'A thrilling book - one that will speak to readers who have felt the terror of isolation in these recent months and one that will simultaneously, as great books do, lift them out of it.'-Vogue
'Explores complex ideas about privilege and fate with miraculous wit and grace.'-Jenny Offill
'A slippery and duplicitous marvel . . . A signature novel for this blasted year.'-NPR
'A prescient book, built for these strange times, sure to entrance and electrify.'-Samantha Hunt
'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.'-New Yorker
'Read it with the lights on.'-Jenna Bush Hager, October Book Club pick