Leave the World Behind

By: Rumaan Alam

Narrated by: Marin Ireland

Bloomsbury presents Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam, read by Marin Ireland.

NOW 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*

'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’ OBSERVER

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A 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 civilisation, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one another?
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FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2020

FINALIST FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2021

A 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

©2020 Rumaan Alam (P)2020 HarperCollins US

A riveting and alternative take on the genre.

Hooked til the very end. A sobering, and let’s face it, probably utterly realistic story of real human nature when faced with what the protagonists experience.

Unrelenting misery

I don’t know about this book. I get she wrote it before Covid and she masterfully managed to show some terrifying parallels. But it was just so unrelenting. So hopeless and in the end it felt pointless. I dragged myself to finish it hoping for some light but alas.