Radiance

Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright. His work has been published and performed in over two dozen languages. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for Fiction, and an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among other honors. Akhtar is the author of the novels American Dervish, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year, and Homeland Elegies, named one of 10 Best Books of 2020 by The New York Times. He has also authored the plays McNeal, Junk, Disgraced, The Who & The What, and The Invisible Hand. Akhtar was named the New York State Author in 2021.

'I cannot remember the last time a book made me feel and think so much. THE RADIANCE is as thrilling as it is illuminating. It quickened my pulse, activated my senses, awakened my mind and stirred my soul.  A wondrous, transcendent reading experience.' Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown '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 '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, 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, author of Redeployment  'The language and its fluidity, and often its delicacy and poetry, carried me along and in the days after I finished it all felt as if it was still reverberating, as if it was a real experience I had lived through with the character and the slowly unfolding mystery.' Joel Meyerowitz