Embarrassingly, Rumaan Alam was not on my radar until I heard an interview with him on NPR. As he summarized this recent work for the listeners, I was shocked, as I’m sure you will be if you choose to read it, that it was written a good two years before the pandemic. Like some fiction writers before him, he has become an accidental modern prophet of sorts. His prophecy was not delivered from a mountain top but by Ecco publishing, an Imprint of Harper Collins, and soon to be streamed in movie form as Denzel Washington’s production company has already bought the rights.
As readers, we’re often dropped into a dystopia when whatever it is that’s upended the world has already happened. Typically, these tales also introduce us to people who have had to adapt, quickly becoming shells of who they once were while growing into larger than life characters who will somehow be able to thrive in their new normal. We are taken on a long journey with them through hellish landscapes or combating technologically advanced villains to establish a place for themselves.
Though not marketed as a dystopian novel, that is exactly what it Leave the World Behind is, and Alam has done what few have managed to do by turning the genre on its head. He exposes us to not to a chaotic- or drudgery-filled aftermath, but the tension-filled days prior. Days when people are only just becoming aware that life as they knew it may be over.
The story is not about what has ended the world, if it is ending (the author leaves this up for interpretation). This is a very unique story about human nature and how people change and contort when they think there is a threat. Alam is a master of crafting that slow trickle tension. We, like the characters, get acclimated to the idea that something is happening whether we like it or not. Like frogs brought to a slow boil in a pot, we stay, turning pages, getting used to the ever looming threat of Alam’s outside force that goes virtually unnamed.
Joining us in the hot water are the MCs—burnt out Manhattanites, Clay and Amanda along with their two teenagers. Needing a break from city life, they had decided get out of town and set up camp at an extravagant rental home about an hour outside New York. They’re getting some much needed relaxation, and the only hint that this won’t be the respite they planned on, is the cable and internet going haywire within a day or so of arrival.
These malfunctions alone are not that alarming. Not long into the trip, however, the owners of the Air B and B, an older Black couple named Rose and G.H., arrive on their doorstep telling them they have to evacuate the city and come to their second home due to massive power outages. It becomes clear that whatever problem that’s causing the technology and power failures is plaguing more than just the vacationing family. After some awkward deliberation about whether or not the guests will leave, the two families decide to hunker down and make the best of it until they know what exactly is going on.
This choice leads to a myriad of strange and morally stretching situations that do anything but disappoint. The greatest thing about the novel is that this simplistic-at-first-glance Air B and B scenario is only a context to explore bigger questions and concerns about human nature. Though Alam intends for some overt and not so overt racism to be on display as well, the main crux of the book is class. None of the characters are bondable. You find yourself removed and wondering what happens to them while simultaneously not caring about them. I wonder if this was intentional, to show a coldness or distance, that class and having the “me and mine” attitudes can create between people. Indeed, we are left with the same skepticism about the characters that they have about each other
We can’t be too hard on them though. They’re not really in a bonding moment as they’re in a crisis, and we come to understand that being rich, with means, and being in a crisis is a totally different animal than being without means in one. While G.H. ventures out to see what is evolving, and see if there’s any help to be had, he is accosted by a maid from a neighbor’s house running out at him, yelling, in need of aid. G.H. is not only faced with how he’ll keep he and Rose and their Air B and B guests safe, but whether or not he’ll use his means to help a stranger. In a disturbing yet oddly understandable moment, he drives on, leaving the maid waving her arms behind in his rear view.
Alam’s story is full of choices that are uncomfortable and yet irritatingly relatable. It shows us that no matter how hard we might try to leave the world behind, it never leaves us and we are always faced with just what kind of human being we are going to be. Most of all it does so, by keeping us wanting to read, to splash about in the pot, till the very last page.
Check out the original Fresh Air episode featuring Rumaan ALam on NPR here.