Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday

Description

Bibliographic Details

• Author: Lisa Halliday
• Title: Asymmetry
• Publisher: ‎ Simon & Schuster; First Simon & Schuster Hardcover Edition (February 6, 2018)
• Language: ‎ English
• Format: Hardcover w/Library Binding – 275 pages‏
• ISBN-10: ‎ 150116676X
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1501166761
• Item Weight: ‎ 1.05 pounds
• Dimensions: ‎ 5.6 x 1.0 x 8.5 inches
• Book Condition: Used – Very Good (Former library book; may include the markings and stickers associated from the library.)
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good – Mylar Library Dust Jacket
• Edition: First Simon & Schuster Hardcover Edition

Synopsis:

A singularly inventive and unforgettable debut novel about love, luck, and the inextricability of life and art, from 2017 Whiting Award winner Lisa Halliday.

Told in three 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 suggests an aspiring novelist’s coming-of-age.

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 an urgent, important, and truly original work that will captivate any reader while also posing arresting questions about the very nature of fiction itself.

About the Author:

Lisa Halliday (born July 12, 1976) is an American author and novelist. She is most known for her novel Asymmetry, for which she received a Whiting Award in 2017.

Halliday started writing amateur short stories and books in the mid-1990s. In 1997, while studying at Harvard, she wrote The Unofficial Guide to Life at Harvard 1997-1998. In 2005, her short story Stump Louie appeared in the Paris Review.

Halliday published her debut novel, Asymmetry, in 2018, for which she received a Whiting Award in the fiction category. The book was published by Simon & Schuster in February 2018. The book was named as one of the top ten books of 2018 by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time, and several other publications. Barack Obama included the book in his list of best books from 2018.