"In the early hours of one September morning in 2008, there appeared on the doorstep of our home in South Kensington a brown-skinned man, haggard and gaunt faced, the ridges of his cheekbones set above an unkempt beard." So begins Zia Haider Rahman's debut novel, filled with snappy philosophizing that will attract fans of David Foster Wallace. The narrator, an investment banker, is reconnected with his long-lost university friend Zafar, a Bengali-born mathematical prodigy raised mainly in Britain by impoverished parents. After a mysterious disappearance, Zafar reenters the narrator's life just as the Great Recession descends, and the resumption of their friendship shatters the narrator's calm, vaguely unsatisfying life in ways deeper and more permanent than the destruction of his career.
Zafar has come to share a confession that will leave the narrator shaken and wondering what, if any, blame he might carry for Zafar's pain and for the pain Zafar inflicted upon others. Rahman packs the narrator's private musings and conversations with Zafar with more general explorations of the human condition.
Rahman seamlessly introduces mathematical theories, cognitive science and the joint histories of Bangladesh, Pakistan and India without taking the reader out of the scope of the story, keeping it simultaneously global and intimate. He also examines the impact of some of the most explosive events of our budding century: the 9/11 attacks, the subsequent military conflicts and the financial collapse of 2008.
While not to be undertaken lightly, this devastating web of truths and misconceptions is ideal for readers longing to immerse themselves in a deep, complex experience. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads