About Leave the World Behind
How you think you will respond to a crisis and how you actually respond to a crisis are never the same - and Amanda and Clay learn that the hard way when their long weekend in remote Long Island is upended by a city-wide blackout, bizarre goings-on with animals in the surrounding woodlands, and the arrival of Ruth and G.H., complete strangers and the owners of the vacation home Amanda and Clay are staying in with their teenage children.
Rumaan Alam’s second novel is a suspenseful, magnetic look at parenthood, race, class, and how much you can trust other people in a crisis. Written well before the Covid-19 pandemic hit the United States, both the publish date and the novel’s content have made Leave the World Behind an unexpected symbol of how the pandemic can impact and change people as well as a powerful look at climate change.
Join author Rumaan Alam for a deep dive into Leave the World Behind on BookClub, where he discusses the overpowering nature of the book (an intentional decision), how the novel comments on race (and why he wants the reader to really determine what the book says about race), and how the pandemic changed how the book was received (“context determines how you feel about an artifact,” Alam says). Leave the World Behind is a novel that will leave you unsettled and contemplating your impact on the world around you in only a way a great novel can.
Rumaan Alam’s second novel is a suspenseful, magnetic look at parenthood, race, class, and how much you can trust other people in a crisis. Written well before the Covid-19 pandemic hit the United States, both the publish date and the novel’s content have made Leave the World Behind an unexpected symbol of how the pandemic can impact and change people as well as a powerful look at climate change.
Join author Rumaan Alam for a deep dive into Leave the World Behind on BookClub, where he discusses the overpowering nature of the book (an intentional decision), how the novel comments on race (and why he wants the reader to really determine what the book says about race), and how the pandemic changed how the book was received (“context determines how you feel about an artifact,” Alam says). Leave the World Behind is a novel that will leave you unsettled and contemplating your impact on the world around you in only a way a great novel can.
