Author Rumaan Alam discusses his new novel, and National Book Awards finalist, 'Leave the World Behind.'
Is it the end of the world? Or a regional blackout? A hurricane? An atomic bomb laced with nerve gas? The planet finally exacting its revenge for centuries of abuse? Or maybe it’s just a temporary glitch in a satellite overhead? Rumaan Alam’s ravishing, ravaging new novelstarts out with calmly enough, with an upper-middle-class white family from New York City Airbnb-ing a gorgeous country house tucked in the woods on the southern tip of Long Island.
BOLLEN: Obviously, this book captures all of the paranoia and terror and hell of 2020 with such startling accuracy. But you started writing this book in 2018, and that makes me think, every year now is one just filled with madness and chaos. I am sure this book will perfectly capture whatever hell awaits us in 2021, too. So I want to ask the opposite of what most people might—do you think this book speaks to a reality beyond this crazy year of 2020.
BOLLEN: I’ve spent a lot of time on Eastern Long Island, where your book is set. How important was that as a locale to you? This book is about a global meltdown, and yet I caught the regional cues of the area—the turkeys and little sheds selling eggs, the hand-painted corn signs, the ticks. Were you beholden to Long Island details even though the whole world is blowing up?
BOLLEN: No happy endings, and yet I often wonder, do people want reality in their fiction. It does seem people read books precisely for comfort. BOLLEN: We spend so much time wondering how a reader will feel or react to a book, we often forget that the actual writing of a book can put writers in very difficult frames of mind. There is an emotional and physical toll in writing certain material. I wondered if you experienced any of that while working on this book.
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