The Radiance

A NEW YORK TIMES NOVEL EVERYONE WILL BE TALKING ABOUT IN 2026 A TIME MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026

Simply put, a work of genius. Abraham Verghese, author of The Covenant of Water

A mysterious accident along a country road sparks an awakening and an investigation in Pulitzer Prizewinning playwright and acclaimed novelist Ayad Akhtars most daring work yeta visionary novel of spiritual transformation in an age of fracturebordering at times on the ineffable (Mary Gaitskill, bestselling author of Bad Behavior).

When a hit-and-run shatters more than his body, a writer is plunged into a spiritual awakening he cant tell from madness. In its grip, hes drawn to a brilliant campus colleague by an uncanny pull, and into a scandal that threatens to destroy them both. What begins as a provocative portrait of academic and cultural warfare deepens into erotic entanglement, the exposure of a family secret, and the mystery surrounding the narrators accidentboth the violence and its aftermath.

Moving between rural America and Europe, Islam and Christianity, the intimate and the metaphysical, The Radiance is of our American moment and beyond itasking not only what has broken, but what radiance remains.