Leave the World Behind
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- 129,00 kr
Publisher Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION
A Recommended Book From
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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 out to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation: 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 a late-night knock on the door breaks the spell. Ruth and G. H. are an older couple—it’s their house, and they’ve arrived in a panic. They bring the news that a sudden blackout has swept the city. But in this rural area—with the TV and internet now down, and no cell phone service—it’s hard to know what to believe.
Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple—and vice versa? What happened back in New York? Is the vacation home, isolated from civilization, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one other?
Suspenseful and provocative, Rumaan Alam’s third novel is keenly attuned to the complexities of parenthood, race, and class. Leave the World Behind explores how our closest bonds are reshaped—and unexpected new ones are forged—in moments of crisis.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This terrifying thriller is impossible to stop listening to, especially on a chilly night. Clay and Amanda take their family to a luxe vacation home in the Hamptons expecting rest and relaxation. But when another couple arrives and claims the vacation home is actually theirs, things turn decidedly ominous and it becomes clear that something terrible is happening. Rumaan Alam’s first foray into dystopian psychological horror is fantastic. He matches his tense plot with a disorienting writing style in which the unnamed omniscient narrator constantly breaks the fourth wall to address us directly with snarky asides about the characters’ inner thoughts, whether it’s Clay’s disgust about his kids’ fast-food-induced flatulence or Amanda’s casual racism. Narrator Marin Ireland does a great job helping us to inhabit the story while building an overall sense of disorientation as the potentially apocalyptic circumstances mount into a sense of spine-chilling dread.
