Ayad Akhatar with Fatima Asghar, - The Radiance
Featured Book
The Radiance: A Novel
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 Prize–winning playwright and acclaimed novelist Ayad Akhtar’s most daring work yet—a visionary novel of spiritual transformation in an age of fracture—“bordering 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 can’t tell from madness. In its grip, he’s 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 narrator’s accident—both 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 it—asking not only what has broken, but what radiance remains.
This book will be available for purchase at the event.
About This Event
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 Prize–winning playwright and acclaimed novelist Ayad Akhtar’s most daring work yet—a visionary novel of spiritual transformation in an age of fracture—“bordering 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 can’t tell from madness. In its grip, he’s 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 narrator’s accident—both 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 it—asking not only what has broken, but what radiance remains.
Featured Author
Ayad Aktar
Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright. His work has been published and performed in over two dozen languages. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for Fiction, and an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among other honors. Akhtar is the author of the novels American Dervish, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year, and Homeland Elegies, named one of 10 Best Books of 2020 by The New York Times. He has also authored the plays McNeal, Junk, Disgraced, The Who & The What, and The Invisible Hand. Akhtar was named the New York State Author in 2021.
In Conversation With
Fatimah Asghar
Fatimah Asghar, author of If They Come for Us, is a poet, filmmaker, educator, and performer. They are the writer and co-creator of Brown Girls, an Emmy-nominated web series that highlights friendships between women of color. They also were a co-producer on Ms. Marvel for Disney + and wrote the episode "Time And Again." Along with Safia Elhillo, they are the editor of Halal If You Hear Me, an anthology that celebrates Muslim writers who are also women, queer, gender-nonconforming, and/or trans.
About the Venue
Barnsdall Gallery Theatre
Presented by Skylight Books
4814 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90027
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Coyotes Fiction Book Club
Join us every fourth Tuesday of the month for our fiction book club!