Asymmetry - by Lisa Halliday (Paperback)

About the Book

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

Book Synopsis

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Richard Gere and Diana Silvers. A Time and New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year * New York Times Notable Book and Times Critic's Top Book of the Year NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF The Year BY * Elle * Bustle * Kirkus Reviews * LitHub * NPR * Oprah Daily The bestselling and critically acclaimed debut novel by Lisa Halliday is "a brilliant and complex examination of power dynamics in love and war" (The Wall Street Journal).Told in two 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 explores Alice's artistic aspirations and growing frustrations of living in Ezra's shadow. 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 "a transgressive roman a clef, a novel of ideas, and a politically engaged work of metafiction" (The New York Times Book Review), and a "literary phenomenon" (The New Yorker). Lisa Halliday's novel will captivate any reader with while also posing arresting questions about the very nature of fiction itself.

Review Quotes

WINNER OF A 2017 WHITING AWARD // NATIONAL BESTSELLER Praise for Asymmetry "Asymmetry is extraordinary, and the timing of its publication seems almost like a feat of civics. . . .Halliday's prose is so strange and startingly smart that its mere existence seems like commentary on the state of fiction. . . . It's a first novel that reads like the work of an author who has published many books over many years. . . . Halliday has written, somehow all at once, a transgressive roman a clef, a novel of ideas and a politically engaged work of metafiction." -Alice Gregory, The New York Times Book Review "Masterly...As you uncover the points of congruence, so too do you uncover Halliday's beautiful argument about the pleasure and obligations of fiction...It feels as if the issues she has raised - both explicitly and with the book's canny structure - have sown seeds that fiction will harvest for years to come." -"The New Vanguard," The New York Times Book Review "Exquisite...For us, the ride is in surrendering to falling down rabbit holes to unknown places. The moment "Asymmetry" reaches its perfect ending, it's all the reader can do to return to the beginning in awe, to discover how Halliday upturned the story again and again." -The Washington Post "A scorchingly intelligent first novel. . . a clever comedy of manners set in Manhattan as well as a slowly unspooling tragedy about an Iraqi-American family, which poses deep questions about free will, fate and freedom, the all-powerful accident of one's birth and how life is alchemized into fiction. . . . [Asymmetry] will make you a better reader, a more active noticer. It hones your senses." -Parul Seghal, The New York Times "A brilliant and complex examination of power dynamics in love and war." -Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal "It's hard to deny, by the novel's end, that Alice/Halliday has pulled off this stunt of transcendence. As with a gymnast who's just stuck a perfect routine, your impulse is to ask her, what's next?" -Christian Lorentzen, New York Magazine "Lisa Halliday's debut novel, Asymmetry, begins with a lopsided affair-a perfect vehicle for a story of inexperience and advantage . . . Alice and Amar may be naive, but Halliday is knowing-about isolation, dissatisfaction and the pain of being human." -Time Magazine "Asymmetry is a debut burnished to a maximum shine by technical prowess, but it offers readers more than just a clever structure: a familiar world gone familiarly mad." -The New Republic "In its subtle and sophisticated fable of literary ambition, and the forms it can take for a young woman writer, Asymmetry is a "masterpiece" in the original sense of the word-a piece of work that an apprentice produces to show that she has mastered her trade. . . . Much more rarely do we hear this story from the young woman's point of view. What's so powerful and interesting about Asymmetry is that Halliday does not exactly undo that silencing; rather, she enacts it, and then explodes it." -The Atlantic "An interesting meditation on creativity, empathy, and the anxiety of influence. . . Asymmetry is a guidebook to being bigger than ourselves." -NPR "Lisa Halliday's striking debut is certainly - as the title implies - a sharp examination of the unequal power dynamic between men and women, innocence and experience, fame and aspiration. . . . asking a dizzying number of questions, many to thrilling effect. That it leaves the reader wondering is a mark of its success." -The Guardian (UK) "In her stunning debut novel, Lisa Halliday places three storylines in close proximity, leading to fascinating contrasts. After reading only a few sentences of her intelligent prose (and that dialogue!), you'll be itching for her next novel, whenever it should come." -Refinery29 "A beautiful debut novel . . . Halliday deftly and subtly intersects the two disparate stories, resulting in a deep rumination on the relation of art to life and death." -Booklist (starred review) "It's not on

About the Author

Lisa Halliday is an American writer who received a Whiting Award for Fiction. Her work has appeared in Granta, The Paris Review, and The New York Review of Books. Her first novel, Asymmetry, has been published in twenty languages and was named one of the Top Ten Books of the Year by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time, and many other publications. Asymmetry was also one of President Obama's favorite books of the year and was shortlisted for several prizes including a National Book Critics Circle Award and the Prix du Premier Roman. Lisa grew up in Massachusetts and now lives in Milan, Italy, with her husband and daughter. Since 2023, she has served as Literary Executor of The Estate of Louise Glück.