“That’s what art does,” Rumaan Alam tells EW.
“It bubbles up and digests whatever’s happening in the culture.”
When does a novelist’s moment arrive?
Credit: Michael Bucher; Ecco
Maybe ask Rumaan Alam.
How does all the attention feel?
Speaking over Zoom from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where he lives with his husband, photographer David A.
Land, and their two children, Alam, 43, comes armed with sharp insights into his work.
A blackout has engulfed all of New York City, they explain.
The apocalypse may be coming, Alams omniscient narrator warns.
Sheltering in place while some unknown terror lurks beyond the houses walls?
The resonance is clear, even if the book was written before the pandemic.
But none of these things are exactly new.
He has a singular faculty for dialogue he hears just how it sounds, whats concealed behind it.
InBehind, a mother will ask should I make lunch?
even though shes less hungry than bored.
It fleshes out Alams style with an addicting pace.
Thrillers are about seducing and entertaining the reader, he says.
I wanted the book to feel sticky, like you just couldnt get out of it.
Youre held in there.
And to me, that is what makes it realistic.
That describes how I feel about the world right now.
I have two answers and 65 more questions.
Rights toBehindwere snatched up byNetflixand directorSam Esmail(Mr.
Robot)for a reported seven figures in July.
Its such a cliche, but it was like an out-of-body experience, Alam admits.
None of it seemed real.
I said at one point, I just want to clarify that were talking about Julia Roberts?
Because were talking about her like shes just our friend whos in the other room.
Well, get used to it: Soon, she just might be.
