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Rumaan Alam

Biography

Rumaan Alam

Rumaan Alam is the author of LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND, RICH AND PRETTY and THAT KIND OF MOTHER. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Elle, New York Magazine, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, The Rumpus, Buzzfeed and elsewhere. He studied at Oberlin College, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Rumaan Alam

Books by Rumaan Alam

Leave the World Behind
by Rumaan Alam - Fiction

Amanda and Clay head out to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they’ve rented for the week. But a late-night knock on the door breaks the spell. Ruth and G.H. are an older couple --- it’s their house, and they’ve arrived in a panic. They bring the news that a sudden blackout has swept the city. But in this rural area --- with the TV and internet now down, and no cell phone service --- it’s hard to know what to believe. Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple, and vice versa? What happened back in New York? Is the vacation home a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one another?

That Kind of Mother
by Rumaan Alam - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Like many first-time mothers, Rebecca Stone finds herself both deeply in love with her newborn son and deeply overwhelmed. Struggling to juggle the demands of motherhood with her own aspirations, she reaches out to the only person at the hospital who offers her any real help --- Priscilla Johnson --- and begs her to come home with them as her son’s nanny. Rebecca is white, and Priscilla is black, and through their relationship, Rebecca finds herself confronting, for the first time, the blind spots of her own privilege. When Priscilla dies unexpectedly in childbirth, Rebecca steps forward to adopt the baby. But she is unprepared for what it means to be a white mother with a black son.