The Literary Voyeur: Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

Presenting Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam. Reviewed by The Literary Voyeur for In the Stacks.

Set in a bucolic Long Island vacation home during the chaos, confusion, and uncertainty that comes from an unnamed global crisis (the internet and cellular services are down), Alam’s finely-wrought novel feels almost uncanny in its sagacity about the current state of America. The main characters (a white family of four from Brooklyn and an older black couple from Manhattan) are unexpectedly drawn together as they attempt to understand why and how their connection to the outside world has been destroyed. At the same time, they grapple with age-old assumptions about race, class, sex, and intellect in a series of pointed conversations and silent observations. Leave the World Behind is not only a tense page-turner but also a lucid and illuminating cultural commentary that seems to have come to us at just the right time.


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