Asymmetry

A TIME and NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK of the YEAR * New York Times Notable Book and Times CriticΓÇÖs Top Book of 2018 NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018 BY * Elle * Bustle * Kirkus Reviews * Lit Hub* NPR * O,The Oprah Magazine * Shelf Awareness ΓÇ£Asymmetry is extraordinary…Halliday has writtensomehow all at oncea transgressive roman a clefa novel of ideas and a politically engaged work of metafiction.ΓÇ¥ ΓÇöAlice GregoryThe New York Times Book Review ΓÇ£A brilliant and complex examination of power dynamics in love and war.ΓÇ¥ ΓÇöSam SacksThe Wall Street Journal ΓÇ£A scorchingly intelligent first novel…Asymmetry will make you a better readera more active noticer. It hones your senses.ΓÇ¥ ΓÇöParul SeghalThe New York Times A singularly inventive and unforgettable debut novel about loveluckand the inextricability of life and artfrom 2017 Whiting Award winner Lisa Halliday. Told in three distinct and uniquely compelling sectionsAsymmetry explores the imbalances that spark and sustain many of our most dramatic human relations: inequities in agepowertalentwealthfamegeographyand justice. The first sectionΓÇ£FollyΓÇ¥ tells the story of Alicea young American editorand 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 WarΓÇ£FollyΓÇ¥ also suggests an aspiring novelistΓÇÖs coming-of-age. By contrastΓÇ£MadnessΓÇ¥ is narrated by Amaran Iraqi-American man whoon his way to visit his brother in Kurdistanis 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 overlapwith yet new implications for their relationship revealed in an unexpected coda. A stunning debut from a rising literary starAsymmetry is an urgentimportantand truly original work that will captivate any reader while also posing arresting questions about the very nature of fiction itself.