The Radiance - by Ayad Akhtar (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A mysterious accident along a country road sparks an awakening and investigation in Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and acclaimed novelist Ayad Akhtar's most daring work yet -- a visionary novel of spiritual transformation in an age of fracture.

When a hit-and-run shatters more than his body, a writer is caught between revelation and madness as an uncanny pull toward a brilliant campus colleague ensnares him in a scandal that threatens to destroy them both. What begins as a provocative portrait of academic and cultural warfare deepens into erotic entanglement, the exposure of a family secret, and the mystery surrounding the narrator's accident--both the violence and its aftermath.

Moving between rural America and Europe, Islam and Christianity, the intimate and the metaphysical, The Radiance is of our American moment and beyond it -- asking not only what has broken, but what radiance remains.

Review Quotes

"The Radiance is a fantastic surprise, a novel made of oppositions: almost painfully intimate, culturally wide-angled, vulnerable, shrewd, compassionate and ruthless, tragic and well, radiant. Bordering at times on the ineffable, it is a unique and extraordinary reading experience."-- Mary Gaitskill, author of The Devil's Treasure

"The Radiance is simply put a work of genius. Through unforgettable characters Akhtar explores the nature of memory and of the soul, while the unfolding tale builds tension and anticipation like a whodunit. The Radiance is hard to put down and so original it will linger with me for a long time."--Abraham Verghese, author of The Covenant of Water

"Electric and unforgettable: Only Akhtar could navigate territory this fraught--power, obsession, violation, and desire--and emerge with a book this urgent and alive." --Tara Westover, New York Times bestselling author of Educated

"A campus novel like no other, profound and beautiful, whose narrator weathers today's chaos while circling the ultimate questions--and somehow fun as hell to read. This brilliant book left me awestruck." --Phil Klay, winner of the National Book Award for Redeployment