In The Light Of What We Know

A bold; epic debut novel set during the war and financial crisis that defined the beginning of our century One September morning in 2008; an investment banker approaching forty; his career in collapse and his marriage unravelling; receives a surprise visitor at his West London home. He struggles to place the dishevelled figure carrying a backpack; until he recognizes a friend from his student days; a brilliant man who disappeared years earlier under mysterious circumstances. The friend has resurfaced to make a confession of unsettling power. Theirs is the age-old story of the bond between two men and the betrayal of one by the other. As the friends begin to talk; and as their room becomes a world; a journey begins that is by turns exhilarating; shocking; intimate and strange. Set against the breaking of nations and beneath the clouds of economic crisis; and moving between Kabul; New York; Oxford; London and Islamabad; In the Light of What We Know tells the story of people wrestling with unshakeable legacies of class and culture; and pushes at the great questions of love; origins; science; faith and war. In an extraordinary feat of imagination; Zia Haider Rahman has woven the seismic upheavals of our young century into a novel of rare compassion; scope; and courage.