Asymmetry: A Novel

Asymmetry: A Novel

<b>NATIONAL BESTSELLER</b><BR> <BR> <b><i>“Asymmetry </i>is extraordinary...Halliday has written, somehow all at once, a transgressive roman a clef, a novel of ideas and a politically engaged work of metafiction.” —Alice Gregory, <i>The New York Times Book Review</i></b><BR> <BR> <b>“A brilliant and complex examination of power dynamics in love and war.”</b> <b>—Sam Sacks, <i>The Wall Street Journal</i></b><BR> <BR> <b>“A scorchingly intelligent first novel...<i>Asymmetry</i> will make you a better reader, a more active noticer. It hones your senses.” —Parul Seghal, <i>The New York Times</i></b><BR> <BR> A singularly inventive and unforgettable debut novel about love, luck, and the inextricability of life and art, from 2017 Whiting Award winner Lisa Halliday.<BR><BR>Told in three distinct and uniquely compelling sections, <i>Asymmetry</i> explores the imbalances that spark and sustain many of our most dramatic human relations: inequities in age, power, talent, wealth, fame, geography, and justice. The first section, “Folly,” tells the story of Alice, a young American editor, and her relationship with the famous and much older writer Ezra Blazer. A tender and exquisite account of an unexpected romance that takes place in New York during the early years of the Iraq War, “Folly” also suggests an aspiring novelist’s coming-of-age. By contrast, “Madness” is narrated by Amar, an Iraqi-American man who, on his way to visit his brother in Kurdistan, is detained by immigration officers and spends the last weekend of 2008 in a holding room in Heathrow. These two seemingly disparate stories gain resonance as their perspectives interact and overlap, with yet new implications for their relationship revealed in an unexpected coda.<BR> <BR>A stunning debut from a rising literary star, <i>Asymmetry</i> is an urgent, important, and truly original work that will captivate any reader while also posing arresting questions about the very nature of fiction itself.