A Hero of Our Time
β Scribed by Naben Ruthnum
- Book ID
- 111096617
- Publisher
- McClelland & Stewart
- Year
- 2022
- Tongue
- en-US
- Weight
- 475 KB
- Category
- Fiction
- ISBN-13
- 9780771096518
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
β¦ Synopsis
A wry comic novel with an acerbic wit, A Hero of Our Time is a vicious takedown of superficial diversity initiatives and tech culture, with a beating heart of broken sincerity.
Osman Shah is a pitstop on his white colleague Olivia Robinsonβs quest for corporate domination at AAP, an edutech startup determined to automate higher education.
Osman, obsessed by Oliviaβs ability to successfully disguise ambition and self-interest as collectivist diversity politics, is bent on exposing her. Aided by his colleague turned comrade-in-arms Nena, who loathes and tolerates him in equal measure, Osman delves into Olivia's twisted past. But at every turn, he's stymied by his unfailing gift for cruel observation, which he turns with most ferocity on himself, without ever noticing what it is that stops him from connecting to anyone in his past or present. As Osman loses his grip on his family, Nena, and everything he thought was essential to his identity, he confronts an enemy who may simply be too good at her job to be defeated.
Β
A Hero of Our Time cracks the veneer of well-intentioned race conversations in the West, dismantles cheery narratives of progress through tech and βstreamlinedβ education, and exposes the venomous self-congratulation and devouring lust for wealth, power, and property that lurks beneath.
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
### Review ''Natasha Randall's English, in her new translation, has exactly the right degree of loose velocity. . . . (Nabokov's version, the best-known older translation, is a bit more demure than Randall's, less savage.)'' -James Wood, *London Review of Books* ''[A] smart, spirited new transl