A Time and New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year * New York Times Notable Book and Times Critic's Top Book of 2018 NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2018 BY * Elle * Bustle * Kirkus Reviews * Lit Hub * NPR * Oprah Daily
The bestselling and critically acclaimed debut novel by Lisa Halliday is "a brilliant and complex examination of power dynamics in love and war" (The Wall Street Journal).
Told in two distinct and uniquely compelling sections, Asymmetry 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 explores Alice's artistic aspirations and growing frustrations of living in Ezra's shadow.
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.
A stunning debut from a rising literary star, Asymmetry is "a transgressive roman a clef, a novel of ideas, and a politically engaged work of metafiction" (The New York Times Book Review), and a "literary phenomenon" (The New Yorker). Lisa Halliday's novel will captivate any reader with while also posing arresting questions about the very nature of fiction itself.
About the Author :
Lisa Halliday is an American writer who received a Whiting Award for Fiction. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Paris Review, and The New York Review of Books. Her first novel, Asymmetry, has been published in twenty languages and was named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time, and many other publications. Asymmetry was also one of President Obama's favorite books of the year and was shortlisted for several prizes including a National Book Critics Circle Award and the Prix du Premier Roman. Lisa grew up in Massachusetts and now lives in Milan, Italy, with her husband and daughter. Since 2023, she has served as Literary Executor of The Estate of Louise Glück. Aden Hakimi is a voice-over actor based in Brooklyn. He studied theater performance at Northeastern University in Boston, with adjunct studies at Cambridge University in England and the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin. For over a decade, he has done voice work for audiobooks, commercials, animation, and corporate videos.
Fiona Hardingham is a British-born actress, singer, voice-over artist, and AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator. On stage, she appeared at the Edinburgh Festival in her comedic one-woman show The Dark Show. She has also starred in the dark-comedy short film The Ballerino. She earned a BA honors degree in performing arts from Middlesex University, London, and also studied at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.
Arthur Morey has won three AudioFile Magazine "Best Of" Awards, and his work has garnered numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and placed him as a finalist for two Audie Awards. He has acted in a number of productions, both off Broadway in New York and off Loop in Chicago. He graduated from Harvard and did graduate work at the University of Chicago. He has won awards for his fiction and drama, worked as an editor with several book publishers, and taught literature and writing at Northwestern University. His plays and songs have been produced in New York, Chicago, and Milan, where he has also performed.
Candace Thaxton is an actress and audiobook narrator. She has starred in several films and television shows, including Ghost Town and Law & Order.
Review :
"Asymmetry is a guidebook to being bigger than ourselves."
-- "NPR"
"A deep rumination on the relation of art to life and death."
-- "Booklist (starred review)"
"The moment Asymmetry reaches its perfect ending, it's all the reader can do to return to the beginning in awe, to discover how Halliday upturned the story again and again."
-- "Washington Post"
