A hit-and-run leaves a writer confronting an unsettling question: Is he experiencing a spiritual awakening or losing his mind? That’s the starting point of The Radiance, the new novel by Ayad Akhtar, whose work includes Homeland Elegies and the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Disgraced.” An attraction to a campus colleague draws the narrator into a scandal, while a family secret and the mystery of his accident deepen the intrigue. Moving between rural America and Europe, the novel brings religious belief, erotic desire, and academic conflict into combustible proximity.
On October 12, Kinderhook Books hosts Akhtar in conversation with Joe Donahue, host of WAMC’s "The Book Show," at Van Buren Hall in Kinderhook. The discussion will be recorded for the program, giving readers a chance to hear the author discuss his work in person. A book signing follows the conversation, and each ticket includes a copy of The Radiance to take home.
