Rumaan Alam

Bestselling Novelist

Rumaan Alam is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Leave the World Behind, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and was made into a major motion picture starring Academy Award winners Mahershala Ali and Julia Roberts. Named a Best Book of 2020 by over 20 publications, the suspenseful and provocative novel follows two families who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong.

Now Alam returns with another page-turning take on contemporary morality: Entitlement. Brooke Orr wants to make a difference in the world, to impress her mother along the way, to spend time with friends and secure her independence. Her job assisting an octogenarian billionaire in his quest to give away a vast fortune could help her achieve many of these goals, but it may inspire unsettling new perspectives, as well. Taut, unsettling, and alive to the seductive distortions of money, Entitlement is a riveting tale for our new gilded age, a story that confidently considers questions about need and worth, race and privilege, philanthropy and generosity, passion and obsession. Of the new novel, award-winning author Rebecca Makkai raves: “Entitlement is needle-sharp: discomfiting, disquieting, mesmerizing. Alam taps deep into the greed and ambition that make us human.”

Rumaan Alam is also the author of the novels That Kind of Mother and Rich and Pretty. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn.