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Leave the World Behind : A Novel by Rumaan Alam (2020, Hardcover)
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You are purchasing a Good copy of 'Leave the World Behind: A Novel'. Pages may have minimal notes or highlighting. Cover image on the book may vary from photo.
- Buy It NowLeave the World Behind: A Novel - Alam, Rumaan - Good - See condition notes
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About this product
Product Identifiers
PublisherHarperCollins
ISBN-100062667637
ISBN-139780062667632
eBay Product ID (ePID)26038264947
Product Key Features
Book TitleLeave the World Behind : a Novel
Number of Pages256 Pages
LanguageEnglish
Publication Year2020
TopicFamily Life, Thrillers / Suspense, Thrillers / Supernatural
GenreFiction
AuthorRumaan Alam
FormatHardcover
Dimensions
Item Height0.9 in
Item Weight15.7 Oz
Item Length9 in
Item Width6 in
Additional Product Features
Intended AudienceTrade
LCCN2020-013947
ReviewsAlam brilliantly captures the shift in dynamics between the two families, from apprehension about each other to a collective front against an external entity. The narrative's increasing tempo expertly dives into subtle yet incisive intersections between class and race, since the vacationers are white, and G. H. and Ruth are Black. Alam's novel lobs a series of unsettling questions: How will we react to the next nebulous horror? How will we parent? What will we define as home?, Like Stephen King's 1980 novella The Mist, Leave the World Behind expertly illustrates the horror of the unknown, the almost painful humanity we feel when facing down the end and, of course, human nature under duress. During an era of plague, racism, hatred, and division, this tale of a vacation gone awry is terrifyingly prescient., Rumaan Alam's Leave the World Behind is a canny Trojan horse of a novel, and also a Pandora's Box. Like the family at its center, we're seduced utterly by the bounty and insularity of its world, only to find ourselves, inch by inch, approaching a larger darkness lurking just beyond. With a potent Shirley Jackson energy, it is both eerily timeless and sharply prescient at once, and lingers long after its final page., Leave the World Behind is pitch-perfect in atmosphere, easy to read and deceptive in the high polish of its setting. Alam has crafted a deeply bewitching and disquieting masterpiece., Riveting and claustrophobic, Leave the World Behind invites us to sit with our discomfort and reflect on our own rushed judgments, delivering a dazzling and dark examination of family, race, class, and what matters most when the impossible becomes possible., [I]mpossible to put the book down, to look away... Sometimes it takes a gifted storyteller to make us see what our imaginations cannot grasp. 'Leave the World Behind' tells us, with a heart-stopping insistence, that the time to fix what's broken is now., Rarely have I encountered a book so cuttingly prescient about the current emotional atmosphere...Alam's deployment of creepy, inexplicable detail is masterful....In some ways, the premise feels like the setup of any number of horror films, but Alam's writing transcends that comparison, and the material with which he's working is actually much more complex...This is a thrilling book--one that will speak to readers who have felt the terror of isolation in these recent, torturous months and one that will simultaneously, as great books do, lift them out of it. This book is going to be, as they say, big., Leave The World Behind is that rarest of things, a beautifully written, emotionally resonant page-turner. Alam explores complex ideas about privilege and fate with miraculous wit and grace., Perfectly paced, clever and haunting . . . This is one of those stories that inspires a hungry turn of pages, preceded by that desperate and lovely need to come up for air. So easily the best thing I've read all year., [Alam] is at the top of his game.... One of the eeriest, most disturbing stories I've read in some time.... Alam has not only brought his singular precision and subversive wit to his newest novel, but also has ventured into new, unhinged territory, where the contours of everything might be recognizable, but what's contained within is wholly deranged., This is an exceptional examination of race and class and what the world looks like when it's ending--not at all different from the world we are in now., So clever and so subtle that it draws readers into a false sense of security and understanding.... Initially, the book seems to be about a modern marriage and family, priorities and choices, and how one measures success in the 21st century, and it is. But it is also much more.... Perfectly timed for today's uncertain world., The literary suspense of Leave the World Behind hinges on that familiar guilt-tinged longing for a vacation that never ends. . . . [Alam is] gifted with an acidic wit, one he uses to break down contemporary life at the cellular level. His wry observations about the structured chaos of vacation life might go on indefinitely -- but then comes a knock at the door. . . . Undeniably haunting., Alam crafts a delicious escape while also reflecting cultural issues beyond what we're seeing in 2020.... Yes, reading a book about the world falling apart while the literal world falls apart feels meta, but Leave the World Behind is also a much-needed, delicious escape., 'Leave the World Behind' is the perfect title for a book that opens with the promise of utopia and travels as far from that dream as our worst fears might take us. It is the rarest of books: a genuine thriller, a brilliant distillation of our anxious age, and a work of high literary merit that deserves a place among the classics of dystopian literature., In [Alam's] writing is embodied both beauty and the horror of our daily existence. It's an incredible gift, and one he uses to great effect throughout this novel.... Bearing witness to the range of emotions, the panic, the uncertainty and fear and doubt on a small scale, within this household, provides some comfort. There are no easy answers, but in the midst of uncertainty, we have each other to rely on., If there's one book that will haunt you in 2020, it's this one....Equal parts literary fiction and suspense, Leave the World Behind is an unsettling, thought-provoking, and disturbing look at both the precarious state of world affairs as well as class and race relations. In a year when anything -- including the apocalypse -- feels possible, this novel offers a realistic glimpse of how the world as we know it could end, and it will leave you reeling., A slippery and duplicitous marvel of a novel.... Leave the World Behind is atmospheric and prescient: Its rhythms of comedy alternating with shock and despair mimic so much of the rhythms of life right now. That's more than enough to make it a signature novel for this blasted year., In Leave the World Behind, readers wonder how Alam predicted our contemporary dystopian anxiety.... With lush details that sink under your skin, this is a novel whose confrontational impact lingers., "A white middle-class family rents an upscale home for a vacation. That's one kind of novel. Then, an older Black couple arrives, saying they are the homeowners. Another kind of novel. Finally, the power goes out, and cellphone service disappears. Still another kind of novel. Alam ("That Kind of Mother") doesn't thicken the menacing plot; he changes it up so skillfully, you'll lose your bearings just as the characters do.", I avoided Apocalypse Stories for Months. Then Leave the World Behind Became My Greatest Comfort. . . . I read the book in one sitting, and have thought of it every day since., [A] propulsive thriller...the book is both prescient and terrifying. Alam is an expert observer of the nuances of class and wealth, and the book is full of provocative, sensual detail, including one delicious page and a half where he lists every single thing his protagonist buys at the grocery store., The best book you can read right now . . . A perfectly-engineered thrill ride that is also a novel of ideas, Leave the World Behind combines deft prose, a pitiless view of consumer culture and a few truly shocking moments. . . An exceptional read that will stay with you long after you've sped through its final pages., Leave the World Behind isn't only the novel of 2020, it's so alive and intelligent and awake to the world we've built for ourselves, and over which we falsely believe we have control, that it feels more like one of the defining novels of our era., Leave the World Behind is an interesting type of apocalypse examination because it focuses on what happens to those removed from the action. Rather than fully examining the ramifications of this strange new world, it looks at the scars from the old world -- race, class -- that must be confronted in order for these characters to survive in the new . . . . Leaving the world behind is an illusion, just like a vacation is an illusion. Reality will catch up, and Alam's novel examines what people do differently when it does., Enthralling.... [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, a recognition that we won't find a new normal.
SynopsisA Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick! Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award (Fiction) One of Barack Obama's Summer Favorites A Best Book of the Year From: The Washington Post * Time * NPR * Elle * Esquire * Kirkus * Library Journal * The Chicago Public Library * The New York Public Library * BookPage * The Globe and Mail * EW.com * The LA Times * USA Today * InStyle * The New Yorker * AARP * Publisher's Lunch * LitHub * Book Marks * Electric Literature * Brooklyn Based * The Boston Globe A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong. From the bestselling author of Rich and Pretty comes a suspenseful and provocative novel 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. 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?
LC Classification NumberPS3601.L3257L43 2020
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Ratings and reviews
Most relevant reviews
- 21 Oct, 2024
Very well kept item, pages are intact. O...
Very well kept item, pages are intact. Overall it's a perfect item. Thank you very much!Verified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-owned
- 12 Oct, 2021
Good title for this topic.
The book is very interesting and so appropriate for these times. Well written, thrilling, good topic.Verified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-owned
- 15 Dec, 2020
Interesting !!
Good storyVerified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-owned
- 20 Dec, 2023
Leave the World Behind
Always interesting to read the book before seeing the film. And, hey, Julia liked it!Verified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-owned
- 30 Dec, 2020
Terrible book.
Verified purchase: YesCondition: New
- 05 Jan, 2021
Gift
My stepmom loved it! A great gift!Verified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-owned
- 13 May, 2024
Awesome book! What an ending
Awesome book! What an endingVerified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-owned
