A NEW YORKER
“
ESSENTIAL READ
”
A
NEW YORK TIMES
BESTSELLER
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY
THE NEW YORKER
,
VOGUE
, AND NPR
“Perhaps Hamid’s most remarkable work yet … an extraordinary vision of human possibility.” –Ayad Akhtar, author of
Homeland Elegies
“Searing, exhilarating … reimagines Kafka’s iconic
The Metamorphosis
for our racially charged era.” Hamilton Cain, Oprah Daily
From the
New York Times
-bestselling author of
Exit West
, a story of love, loss, and rediscovery in a time of unsettling change.
One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders’s skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Soon, reports of similar events begin to surface. Across the land, people are awakening in new incarnations, uncertain how their neighbors, friends, and family will greet them.Some see the transformations as the long-dreaded overturning of the established order that must be resisted to a bitter end. In many, like Anders’s father and Oona’s mother, a sense of profound loss and unease wars with profound love. As the bond between Anders and Oona deepens, change takes on a different shading: a chance at a kind of rebirth—an opportunity to see ourselves, face to face, anew.
In Mohsin Hamid’s “lyrical and urgent” prose (
O Magazine
),
The Last White Man
powerfully uplifts our capacity for empathy and the transcendence over bigotry, fear, and anger it can achieve.