Leave the World Behind

SOON TO BE A MAJOR GLOBAL NETFLIX ADAPTATION STARRING JULIA ROBERTS, KEVIN BACON, ETHAN HAWKE AND MAHERSHALA ALI*A THE TIMES #1 BESTSELLER**THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**A BARACK OBAMA SUMMER READING PICK 2021*'Easily the best thing I have read all year' KILEY REID, AUTHOR OF SUCH A FUN AGE 'Intense, incisive, I loved this and have still not quite shaken off the unease' DAVID NICHOLLS'I was hooked from the opening pages' CLARE MACKINTOSH 'Simply breathtaking . . . An extraordinary book, at once smart, gripping and hallucinatory’ OBSERVERA 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 civilization, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one another? FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2020FINALIST FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2021A DAILY TELEGRAPH, GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, IRISH TIMES AND TIME BOOK OF THE YEAR Everyone is talking about LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND 'You will probably need to read it in as close to one sitting as possible’ Sunday Times 'A page-turner taking in themes of isolation, race and class’ Guardian 'A book that could have been tailor-made for our times’ The Times‘A literary page-turner that will keep you awake even after it ends’Mail on Sunday'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‘For the reader, the invisible terror outside in Leave the World Behind echoes the sense of disquiet today in a world convulsed by the pandemic’ Financial Times'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

Stupendously good . . . Simply breathtaking, full of moments of exquisite recognition, as terrifying and prescient as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road . . . Leave the World Behind is an extraordinary book, at once smart, gripping and hallucinatory . . . When future generations (if that term doesn’t sound over-optimistic at the moment) want to know what it was like to live through the nightmare of 2020, this is the novel they’ll reach for, Would be resonant and terrifying even in a more normal year . . . In his dazzling prose, his fascination with catastrophe and his apparent ability to portend the future, Alam is a worthy descendant of Don DeLillo . . . You will probably need to read it in as close to one sitting as possible, A sensation . . . A tense, atmospheric, splendidly written attempt to grapple with impending doom … Even in its infancy, Leave the World Behind was well poised to become the book of an era . . . A striking, unsettling novel, Without any exaggeration, I can honestly say that I devoured Leave the World Behind, in one greedy, uneasy gulp. It’s a taut page-turner – one that starts out as a smart, knowing, contemporary comedy of manners, but quickly spirals into an apocalyptic nightmare so terrifyingly realistic that it sent shivers down my spine, For the reader, the invisible terror outside in Leave the World Behind echoes the sense of disquiet today in a world convulsed by the pandemic. There are intense parallels between the unreality of life in the Long Island bolt-hole described in the book and lockdown . . . The novel excels in its dissection of modern liberal America and forces the reader to confront the limits of their own heroism in the face of disaster

Rumaan Alam is the author of Rich and Pretty and That Kind of Mother. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Elle, New York Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Wall Street Journal, The Rumpus, Buzzfeed, and elsewhere. He studied at Oberlin College, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.